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Bad news for brands enamored with the possibility of connecting one on one with each and every consumer through the magic of social media: Young people don’t want to be friends with you.

just 6 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds who use the Web desire to be friends with a brand on Facebook—despite the fact that half of this demographic uses the site.

Among Web-connected 18- to 24-year-olds that figure does double—meaning that 12 percent of that demo is OK with befriending brands—though the vast majority of young adults are not

When tone of voice is consistent it allows the consumer another means of recognizing the brand and being reassured of expectations.

"Language is available to each of us," argues John Simmons, brand language evangelist and writer of several books on the subject. "Design is seen as a specialist life skill you have to acquire. Poor old language gets devalued because everyone does that, don't they?"

If a company's staff doesn't speak, write or behave in line with what the customer has been led to expect, then he will feel let down.

Today, what counts far more than a puma, a monkey, or a snarling aardvark is the cross-sensory experience your brand offers

I'm talking not only the emotion, beliefs, and desires your brand evokes, but its feel, touch, sound, smell and personality, of which the logo is just one small part

Whether it's a soda can, a car, a doll, a fragrance, a smartphone, or laptop, your brand needs to be smashable, e.g., instantly identifiable via its shape, design, copy, contours, and even navigation. Aside from adolescents, who are always on the lookout for the coolest logos to set them apart from, or help them gain traction with, their peers, today for most consumers the logo comes in near-to-last place to other considerations.

Zappos, Trader Joe's, Amazon.com, Method, Red Bull, The Body Shop, Google, and SodaStream all built their brands without advertising. Their brand advocates are their marketing department. "We've built this entire business, and an entire category in fact, on the power of our brand advocates," says Kristin Harp, U.S. marketing manager at SodaStream, which turns tap water into sparkling water and soda.

the three most powerful social media companies--Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn--never spent a dime on advertising or paid people to recommend them. They didn't need to. Advocates used social media to recommend them to their friends.

You may spend millions of dollars on elaborate marketing campaigns. But there is nothing more powerful than a trusted recommendation from a brand advocate.

According to Anholt, a country has a good and strong brand image if people in other countries feel happy that it exists. If people know that Bulgaria exists but are not grateful that it exists, then something needs to be done.

“There are at least 25 things that excite people all over the world such as poverty, climate change, education, women’s rights, children, crime, terrorism,” said Anholt, adding that the country can choose one of these things, focus on it, to try to change it, thus making itself important for the rest of the world. As an example, he mentioned South Korea’s nation branding efforts, which include improving its image by spending more money on international financial assistance for poor countries.

“This is real politics, real innovation, not something dreamed up by PR agencies,” said Anholt. He warned that inventing a logo or slogan in order to advertise Bulgaria will not be enough and that it will not change people’s perceptions across the world about Bulgaria.

"People want lives that count, resonate, and matter in human terms--and it’s the failure to live that way that leads them to mistrust institutions, instead of respect, adore, and maybe even love them."

an increasing group of companies is striving--intentionally or not--to focus on improving lives.

The fact is that most people don’t care about brands. People surveyed wouldn’t care if 73% brands they used disappeared from their life, a number that remains nearly the same as in last year’s findings.

Of course then there are the brands that step into social media like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They crash our Facebook pages and pose as the tragically hip ordering the latest cocktail infusion at our neighborhood bar. When it comes to “being real or personable”, too many brands come off as cheap polyester versions of Leisure Suit Larry.

We’re sick of the self-promotional ego machinations. The brands we love, come with a personality, authenticity, and unique point of view.

marketers are often too busy chasing the dragon of aggregate click-throughs and response rates to really take notice of whether they’re actually connecting with people.

Content and brand stories should not be conceived of in a sequential manner but rather as an ecosystem and constant narrative.

There has never been a greater need for brands to craft little jewels of content that can sparkle and seduce the most discerning of consumers. Brands that learn to tell their brand story in bite-sized, mobile friendly chunks in the fragmented world of social media will engage consumers.

when a user comes across your Twitter handle or Facebook feed, she doesn't suddenly transform into a "professional-only" mode that consumes, filters and reacts to content based 100% on her company and career. No, her professional persona may take center stage, but her entire thought process is also influenced by the less apparent parts of her personality: the fact that she's a parent, enjoys rock climbing, is coming off a rough week or lives in a city. As marketers, we need to embrace this fundamental nature of user behavior; namely, that people act, engage, and respond not solely as professionals, but as nuanced human beings.

If connection needs to take place at a human level, then our brands must also become human

Being a humanized brand means learning the art of authenticity. It means being genuine, being passionate about whatever it is your brand is and does. Just like in everyday life, people respond most to others who are perceptibly and consistently real. And that's why it's an art, not a formula. Authenticity, in the long run, can't be manufactured or faked.

For a logo to hijack our brains and hearts through pre-attentive processing (those things we see in the corner of our eye), we require multiple exposures to the stimulus. Chatterjee has found this unconscious, positive association to occur within 23 exposures, but she believes it could probably happen in even fewer. “When consumers process any stimulus--a logo is a brand stimulus--implicitly it only creates a weak memory trace. The weak memory trace by itself can’t really change behavior, Chatterjee explains. “But over multiple exposures, those weak memory traces start to become stronger.” “The consumer is unaware that those memory traces exist. Let’s take John and Jane Doe looking at an ultrasound. They’re looking at a picture, they’re oohing and ahhing, showing it to their friends, talking about it, putting it in a scrapbook. They’re focusing on the baby. They may not even know it’s an ultrasound made by a GE machine, but they see it multiple times.” “Then, maybe they’re buying a new house, and so they’re buying appliances, they go to a big-box store, they’re looking at multiple brands. It is quite conceivable they will be more attracted to the GE brands."

for this long con to work, the logo has to be identical everywhere I see it.

The other catch, maybe the most important catch of all when working in unconscious branding, is that the consumer can’t recognize they’re being manipulated, or very bad things happen.

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

marketers are staging "pranks on steroids," upping the ante in almost every imaginable way and probing darker territory—with the sponsor's name attached. Scenarios that trade on fear, death and danger test the limits of personal privacy and social acceptability. The genre, he says, represents "the dark side of the constant drumbeat to enhance consumer engagement."

Almost all these "classic" brands fell out of favor many years ago, often being reduced to a single retail outlet. Yet in a country like China, where heritage, authenticity, and many things European are highly desirable, their obscurity didn’t matter. The simple fact that they were all founded in Europe in another historical time was enough for the brand-obsessed citizens to dig deep into their wallets, and spend big.

I asked a Chinese client who manufactures one of the largest clothing lines in the country when he thought it would be a good time for the company to adopt an international name. After all, very few people outside of China would be able to read, let alone pronounce the name. He looked at me, and with all seriousness replied, "It’s time for the Westerners to learn some Chinese." His is not an isolated attitude; rather it’s a widely held sentiment amongst Chinese senior management

In the same way that China has spent decades selling cheap non-branded labour to the world, when they decide to focus on creating strong international brands, it will undoubtedly be done the Chinese way. When it happens, it will be happening on their terms, regardless of whether you want it or not. 

Launch? Here’s an age-old concept that is being re-shaped in the era of the proto-brand.  As social media and technology open up development, co-creation will become the normative process for many brands.

As the speed and quantity of new offers being thrown at us increases, our attention spans become shorter and we’re more easily distracted.   In this 21st century business environment, brands cannot rely on the one-liner.

In the world of open, brand is more valuable than ever.  More than what you can offer is the outcome of the way you act: trust, equity, and loyalty. Open up to people, and you gain empathy, support, and forgiveness.  Close the door to them, tell the same jokes over and over, and soon you’ll be looking at a theater of empty seats.

“If too many people can buy it, the brand loses its exclusivity.”

Despite the ubiquity of digital and social media, the in-store experience is still integral to producing individualized experiences for high-wealth customers. “Even though the products are available to view online, it is not the same as the experience of seeing them in person,”

Digital and social media can amplify in-store experience for high-wealth customers, but shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a substitute.   

Brands need to become curators of content—and conversation. We all know content is the buzzword of the week. But how do we curate the conversations that are happening around or brands?

The biggest question we must ask is: how do we become interesting to our consumer?

Big data leads to little decisions. Big data is all the rage, and rightfully so: with integrated data streams, you can know your customers as a whole. However, David argues that, when done right, it should be used to help consumers make personalized decisions.

those connecting to the past resonated strongly with consumers and shot to the top of its Brand Power Index (BPI)

a 365 idea--one that can create 365 days of connection between a brand and people

Creativity and innovation are about finding unexpected solutions to obvious problems or finding obvious solutions to unexpected problems

We should use our creativity to provide better businesses and solutions rather than constantly trying to disrupt what people are doing.

The tests showed that brands outperformed people where a person’s relationship to a product was tied to a story--such as the subject who loved his watch, which was handed down from his father, more than his girlfriend, or the man whose life-long love of the Seattle Seahawks measured as stronger than his love for his toddler. In all, three of the eight test subjects showed more love for brands than people. “The product they loved more, they loved for a reason,”

it was telling that when the product beat the person there was always a sense of connection that was driven by story.