Coordinates 07.21.01
Welcome to Coordinates 07.21.01
Hello again!
Well, it’s been a busy 2021, so I can’t believe this is just my second The Agency Oneto newsletter for the year. I hope 2021 has been treating you well given the circumstances as we come out of the pandemic and take on the next stage of what’s facing the world and businesses.
At the beginning of the year, we introduced our 2021 Trend Report on “The Year of The Great Rebuild & New Human Learning” (complete links below). In essence, what we continue to see on the horizon is that we are at a moment in time when as a collective we have a choice to build a better future, while facing and addressing our challenges head on.
A podcast episode I was listening to recently noted that amidst this change one of the trends that’s taking shape is around how businesses may start to measure ESG efforts. A way to answer the question, “Are businesses focused on doing good and building the future we need and addressing the great challenges we face as a society?”
It was encouraging to hear that progress is being made on this front. It called to mind an argument I got into with a finance professor while on a vacation. Yes, you heard that right! Not like me to get into arguments with strangers, but on day 4 of a guided hike in Peru, an after dinner conversation built into a heated discussion where I was trying to convince said finance professor that I believed if we measured business impact differently that we could change how businesses run. My thinking based on what I’d been taught: what gets measured is what influences behavior. He adamantly disagreed and suggested that tax policy would be the only way to change business behavior. He was right in that tax policy would have that impact, but I’m heartened to see that I was not wrong either. As measures change that are used to hold businesses accountable, it will in turn change business behavior. That is where things are moving around ESG. Even as I did my own Brand for Good Benchmark Report last year, I chose the metrics (some hard, some soft) that I believed aligned with my definition of brands doing good in the world. So, we will benefit from standardization.
These developments make me wonder. How would you define success for your business, and what are your business success metrics? Are you measuring the right things for the kind of business impact you want to have? Do your metrics go beyond the typical financial metrics to include measures that are important to a broader stakeholder group, including your customers, employees, society, sustainability, and more? It’s interesting to consider and think about building a new success dashboard that considers all that businesses need to pay attention to these days to be a good global citizen.
With that to ponder, I also share a few additional features below that have caught my attention over the last several months.
Cheers to a good rest of your summer, and finding time for simplicity and joy, as we advocate in our Monthly Progress Practice.
Be well, all!
Kathy
Insights to Inspire to Action
What’s important: Share Price or Assets?
Over the course of my career I’ve worked with a range of companies—some focused more on managing the next financial transaction to create value and some focused more on building brands and assets. Those focused on building brands and assets don’t ignore financial results, but they tend to play the long game and know that building brands pays out in the long term, while chasing share price accretion can do the opposite, erode value and kill brands and businesses. Here are two contrasting examples that caught my attention in the last 6 months.
Hertz - Did you know the story of Hertz and how it was driven into the ground? I don’t care if the brand still has some brand recognition; knowing this story, I’m never renting from Hertz again. The company is now a shell of what it used to be.
Chobani - In contrast, take Chobani. This is a brand and business that has grown with intention, building a strong brand foundation and guided by social good. A case in point around building assets and long-term value: the CEO and founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, gave 2,000 full-time employees stock in the company back in 2016. As the company looks to go public this year, those employees are going to benefit from the brand and value creation to which they’ve all contributed.
As you consider this, what’s guiding your business decisions?
Brand Partnerships + Leveraging Equities
How do you get reach beyond your current consumer base or build new energy for your brand? Leverage brand partnerships. These were three that caught our eye of late:
Nespresso + Caran d’Ache - Nespresso has partnered with fellow Swiss brand Caran d’Ache to create upcycled pencils using 25% recycled Nespresso coffee in its lead and 25% recycled aluminum from the capsules in the pencils. They are also making pens that use recycled aluminum.
Beams + Ziploc - Winning the Monocle Design Award this year, another upcycle example, a Beams umbrella made from recycled Ziploc bags.
Oreo + Other Brands - A clever promotion by Oreo Thins and brands like Green Giant and Ford to throw kids off the scent of Oreo cookies that can now hide in plain sight.
How are you building brand equities, and how can you leverage them with partners to get 1+1=3?
Redesigns + Creating Brand Assets
I love design, and yet I don’t think all marketers think enough about building visual brand assets. Here are three examples of recent redesigns where I think the brands pulled off smart design to maintain and enhance equities:
Yamato Holdings - A beloved brand in Japan with an iconic mark and black and yellow as its core colors. Love these videos that share the branding evolution and elements.
Reynolds Wrap - Seems mundane, right, but the clarity of this brand architecture and redesign is powerful with a smart visual element to convey rolls of foil and use of color to distinguish product types.
Kentucky Fried Chicken - Proudly embracing its heritage, Kentucky Fried Chicken is no longer running from “fried,” and is instead leveraging nostalgia, leaning into its strong visual equities, and integrating details to address modern behaviors (e.g., an app to order ahead, reheat instructions given larger orders).
Are you building strong visual assets you can leverage across all your marketing channels to build brand memory with your consumers?
A Good Listen: What hospitality can teach us
Danny Meyer is the Chief Executive Officer of the Union Square Hospitality Group with restaurants including Gramercy Tavern, The Modern, and Shake Shack. This interview on The Knowledge Project provides inspiration from Danny’s expertise in hospitality that can inspire us to be empathetic to consumers, build a great customer experience, create a great culture, and treat our employees well.
How can you bring a hospitality mindset to your business?
On Watch, Take Notice
ICYMI: Our Annual 2021 Trend Forecast
Find our summary here and just a few signals of what’s been taking shape:
The Monthly Progress Practice – July
Introducing the 2021 Monthly Progress Practice calendar, which offers a monthly practice of small actions or micro-habits to inspire positive change this year. Practice makes progress!
Our guidance for July:
Simplify. What can you strip away from your busy life and still be fulfilled and happy? What can you take away and remove an irritant? Make choices for more simplicity and joy.
“What’s the scorecard we’re all planning for? Is it just unbridled growth? Is the goal that every year you’re bigger and more profitable than the year before and that’s what success looks like? And anything that doesn’t match that simple, narrow definition is a failure? The finances are a means to an end, not the other way around.” — Ryan Gellert, CEO, Patagonia (from an interview in Monocle Magazine)
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The Agency Oneto is a disciplined yet agile business and brand strategy agency whose mission is to partner with purpose-led leaders to make a positive impact on their business and brands and for their consumers and teams, unlocking potential.
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We also lead workshops and facilitate strategy and business planning sessions, provide advisory services, and offer Executive Coaching.