Bluetext’s public relations client SAS has long been a trusted partner of colleges and universities around the world, leveraging their advanced analytics capabilities to provide safe, effective learning environments for students.
This year, the task of providing a safe and effective learning environment is much more challenging as an abundance of COVID-19 makes gathering in tight quarters like dorms, classrooms, and campuses without spreading the virus next to impossible. As a result, many universities have taken detailed measures to plan for student safety in the event of new outbreaks upon their return to campus.
One of these is Oklahoma State University (OSU), where administrators are leveraging SAS technology combined with unique campus data to track the spread of COVID-19 using contact tracing and data analytics.
To be ready for the return of students, faculty, and staff, OSU has integrated different data sources to create inferred links between people, places, and times. OSU connected institutional data such as time and location-based information from its extensive campus Wi-Fi network with over 5,000 access points. This data is then combined with other location-based information such as campus store purchases, card swipes, class schedules and more, which can be linked directly to individual students and provide a more complete picture of anyone who has been in contact with a confirmed case of COVID and anyone who has been in the same location for more than 15 minutes.
These OSU data models generate alerts if the data indicates quarantines or isolations are broken, or if a super-spreader is suspected, and provides general alerts for faculty and students. The data will also be used to help identify areas in need of increased cleaning, social distance monitoring, and other education efforts.
The Today Show recently visited Oklahoma State University and followed a freshman student through a day in his campus life amid COVID, illustrating how the university is leveraging its campus data to track where students have been in the event that new cases of COVID are identified.
Watch this segment of The Today Show here.
In recent years, leading branding firms and marketers have used brand storytelling to create interactive and empathetic experiences for users throughout their purchase journey. By creating a relatable experience, users see brands and companies as groups of real people working to solve real issues rather than faceless entities. Although popular with many B2C companies, brand storytelling in the B2B world is not only possible but encouraged! In fact, 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy if they can connect emotionally with the brand they’re buying from.
As a leading branding firm, we’ve worked with countless companies to use brand storytelling as a way to humanize and socialize their messaging. Keep reading to learn more about how B2B companies have used storytelling to humanize their messages and how a leading branding firm, like Bluetext, can help you craft yours.
Hewlett Packard
Many B2B companies run into the same issue when crafting their brand’s story: density. For many enterprises, educating users on their products and services can seem daunting – but it doesn’t have to be. In their “The Wolf” video, HP addresses a topic that, to many, is seemingly dry and unexciting. With thoughtful execution, however, HP was able to create an attention-grabbing and informative video with Hollywood’s favorite good vs. evil plotline. By creating this short film, HP was able to engage with their audience and create a malicious character that represents the issues companies without printer security face.
With a leading branding firm, companies can work to not only get their brand’s story and message in front of the right people at the right time, but they can do it in a way that grabs the prospect’s attention.
Paya
When Paya – a revolutionary payment solution software company – needed a leading branding firm to help refresh their visual strategy, brand ecosystem, and CVI, they turned to Bluetext. As a part of this brand evolution, Bluetext and Paya worked together to highlight Paya’s mission and goals, through the eyes of their star team.
By introducing their various offices, employees, and everything in between, this story gives users a look past Paya as a corporation and demonstrates the motivated and gifted individuals working together to solve various customer problems. By exemplifying their strong corporate culture, businesses further found Paya as a reliable and trusted partner.
Varonis
Varonis turned to Bluetext to help position the company with C-level executives who are unaware of their enterprise risk by not leveraging solutions to understand who has access to the data their enterprise relies on. Together, Bluetext and Varonis created a two-part campaign to highlight enterprise exposure of sensitive information and to educate executives on insider threats.
By infusing these campaigns with humor, our teams were able to elicit a positive response from viewers, while staying true to the principles of Varonis’ overarching message.
Zendesk
For new brands especially, finding the right story to tell can be very difficult. B2B storytelling doesn’t always need to be real. Zendesk, for example, created a fake, semi-grungy band named “Zendesk Alternative” and even created a website for the band. By using this direction, Zendesk was able to bring more users to their website and further educate them on the problems Zendesk is solving. This approach, although certainly nontraditional, was widely appreciated by users for being so out of the box and unexpected.
With thoughtfully planned out and carefully executed campaigns, we’ve been a part of some of the biggest successes in brand storytelling. A good story is multi-layered and lets your audience know more about your brand and what it stands for. By sharing your brand’s story, you let your current and future customers see your company as a group of hard-working, motivated people who are committed to solving inefficiencies and business problems.
Interested in working with a leading branding agency to help tell your story? Contact Us!
With polaroids and vinyl making a comeback and tiny sunglasses making their appearance on the fashion scene once again, the trends re-emerging over the past few years have solidified the value and power of nostalgia marketing. Regardless of if you are a millennial looking to relive 90’s fashion, or a parent reminiscing about the good old days, nostalgia has something special to offer all customer groups – and that’s why it is such a powerful marketing tactic.
A Jump Back in Time
Nostalgia marketing has been leveraged by brands from all industries. By tapping into positive cultural memories from previous decades, companies can drive energy into their modern campaigns and build trust for new ideas and brands. These campaigns allow companies of any age and background to link their brand purpose with old ideas to evoke feelings of security, comfort, and engagement in their audience.
But why does nostalgia marketing work so well?
Science Daily reported that when people feel nostalgic, they tend to spend more money. When people have higher levels of social connectedness and feel that their wants and needs can be achieved through the help of others, their ability to prioritize and keep control over their money becomes less pressing. Naturally, this makes for the perfect sales and marketing tactic.
Let’s take a look at four companies that have leveraged nostalgia as a marketing strategy to boost sales and brand awareness over the past decade.
General Mills
In 2011, General Mills partnered with Target to introduce retro cereal boxes in their stores. The cereal company released limited-edition box designs for some of their most iconic cereals, recreating the original packaging from the years they were released. Not surprisingly, the sales results were astounding.
The plan not only showed how deeply the brands connect consumers across all generations but also gives today’s parents the opportunity to share memories from their own childhoods with their kids. The campaign has since transformed into an annual one, where sales [doubled] over the first year.
Adobe
Regardless of if you were around in the 1980s to experience the ingenuity of Bob Ross, you surely will recognize him after he surged to popularity again in 2016. Adobe rode the wave of the Bob Ross meme and leveraged the iconic artist’s resurgence, creating a series of tutorial videos to promote their “Adobe Photoshop Sketch” application for the iPad Pro.
Not only did this ad campaign leverage nostalgia marketing to promote Adobe’s new app, but the campaign also took advantage of the trends at the time.
Swiffer
Now, brands don’t need to only use visual branding to evoke feelings of nostalgia. Music is a very easy and straightforward way to instill the feelings of comfort and happiness in your audience.
One very memorable ad campaign that we saw in the aughts was the set of Swiffer commercials that leveraged the song “Baby Come Back” and other early 80s hits. Both humor and nostalgia were hard at work in this campaign, giving the audience a chance to reminisce about the past in a longing way, helping promote the brand in a comforting light.
Apple
When Apple was promoting the release of the iPhone 6s, they notably leveraged a more nostalgic celebrity guest‒Cookie Monster. Everyone’s favorite sweet-toothed Muppet graced our screens and showed us just how simple it is to use the Siri feature on Apple products.
Whether it is visual or auditory, nostalgia marketing can take many different forms. It frequently strikes a chord with audiences of all ages, promoting strong, positive feelings with the featured brand. Leveraging nostalgia marketing in your campaigns is often a smart tactic to help your brand resonate with a wider audience. When you’re considering leveraging nostalgia in your next marketing campaign, be sure to keep in mind whether this strategy is best for your brand. Reach out to the top marketing and branding agencies, like Bluetext, to consult if this marketing strategy is best for your business.
Many enterprise companies and organizations have marketing programs to talk about their products and services with their customers, and rely on those types of product marketing assets to reach their target audiences. That information is important, but it’s missing an essential element in the customer journey—developing a connection with the audience that will last beyond the one transaction.
Digital marketing firms know that building a strong customer relationship is as much about storytelling as it about the product or service. At Bluetext, we work with our clients to develop more than just a story they can tell. We want our clients to elevate that narrative to what we call a Signature Story.
What’s the difference?
A story as most of us understand it is pretty formulaic. It has a beginning, middle and end, and uses facts and anecdotes to paint a picture of the value that a brand is bringing to the market and its customers. We often recommend that our clients change up the order of the narrative, starting with a strong conclusion, placing proof points and examples in the middle, and ending by reinforcing that conclusion. But to take it up another notch and become a central ingredient for the brand, a Signature Story is needed.
Put simply, a Signature Story is a narrative that includes a strategic message and allows a company or organization to grow by enhancing its brand promise, its customer relationships, its business strategy and the strengths of its organization. It should be authentic and intriguing in order to grab attention, and tell a story that quickly and succinctly elevates the brand in the eyes of the target audience. It should be thought-provoking, interesting, entertaining if possible, and should paint a compelling picture in the eye of the customer. Finally, it must be authentic in the sense that it must ring true to brand and not be viewed simply as a marketing ploy. It doesn’t need to be entirely based on facts, but it must be in the spirit of a true story.
Signature stories are critical assets, can provide inspiration and insight both inside and outside of the organization, and can be leveraged over time. The challenge is to identify that core story, and to make it a part of the marketing mix.
A strong example of a Signature Story is the clothing retailer Nordstrom, known for its exceptional customer service and commitment to making it right by the client. As the story goes, a secret shopper in the employ of the parent company visited a Nordstrom store that had previously been on the same location as a store that also sold tires. The secret shopper appeared with a used tire and asked to return it for a refund to the now Nordstrom store. The sales clerk, after perhaps a moment of hesitation, took the tire and provided a refund. The clerk knew that Nordstrom’s reputation for service was the most important element of the brand, and out-weighed the obvious fact that the tire didn’t come from that store.
More important is that it reflects Nordstrom’s key values in a compelling and thought-provoking way, and strengthens is brand values.
Or consider L.L. Bean, the iconic outdoor equipment manufacturer in Maine with a long and colorful history. As told in an article in Brand Quarterly earlier this year, L.L. Bean could be content to portray its culture just by talking about its high-quality merchandise. But, “stating such facts is unlikely to create interest, credibility or even a connection to L.L. Bean.”
Instead, the company tells the story of its founder, Leon L. Bean, an avid outdoorsman, who returned from a hunting trip in 1912 disgruntled because of his cold, wet feet. Undaunted, he developed a new boot by stitching lightweight leather tops to waterproof rubber bottoms. He found that his new design worked so well he offered them for sale via mail order, sending out notices to lists of Maine hunting license holders.
But here’s where this tale becomes a Signature Story: After discovering that most of the first 100 pairs sold had a stitching problem and leaked, L.L. Bean refunded the customers’ money despite the fact that it almost sent him into bankruptcy. He then went about fixing the process so that future boots were indeed watertight. This story communicates the L.L. Bean brand value fare more effectively than simply talking about its quality in a vacuum.
Here are the elements of a Signature Story:
The Message Must Link to the Brand. It should speak to the customer relationship and the business strategy, and it should enhance the brand’s visibility, image, personality, relevance, and/or value proposition.
It Should be Intriguing and Provocative. Elements to consider include some combination of thought-provoking, novel, provocative, interesting, informative, newsworthy, or entertaining to the audience.
Authenticity is Essential. Key audiences cannot perceive the story to be phony, contrived, or a transparent selling effort, and there should be services and programs to back up the main message.
It Should Draw in the Audience. If the story is interesting and engaging, it is more likely to result in an emotional connection and response by the customer.
I was recently running a messaging summit with the executive team of a successful government contractor in the cloud space. Just 13 months ago this company had very little presence and visibility in Washington among key decision makers. Today, through an aggressive PR and lobbying program, they are part of the right conversations.
Now that they are on the map they are ready to aggressively drive sales. So the conversation came around to making sure that all of the management team could deliver the same message, and I asked if we put the top executives into separate rooms and asked for a quick elevator pitch on the company would they all be on message. The immediate response was that they could sure do a better job of it today than when they decided to get serious about marketing and communications last year.
Of course that comment made me smile, and it led to a discussion about one of the fundamental things I tell all clients – the first step in getting the outside world to understand who you are and your value proposition is to align inside your company – ensure that all of the management team (and employees) can tell the same story. Management team and staff are your brand ambassadors – if they can’t easily articulate why you matter then you have no chance convincing decision-makers.
So next time you think about the message you are delivering to the market think about that exercise – if you put all of the members of the management team in different rooms and asked them to describe the company and why you matter, would they deliver a consistent story? If the answer is no then give me a call – it may be a reason why your marketing and communications campaigns are coming up short.