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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.

Traditional segmentation studies group people according to attitudes, needs and behaviors that relate to a specific product category. Tribal analytics complements segmentation studies, adding a layer of richness and dimension to them, by illuminating how people naturally self-organize into “tribes” based on shared values, interests, preferences and behaviors that transcend categories.

Tribal analytics was built on the premise that people aren’t fixed nodes. They evolve within a larger social ecosystem. Their values, preferences and behaviors shift as social and cultural norms do.

The God Squad – this large group is principally, but not exclusively, defined by it faith and belief in God. Land of the Free – they are an amalgam of the most traditional values of duty and responsibility, perseverance, simplicity, and optimism. The Happy Hedonists – optimistic and adventurous, this small but mighty tribe is chiefly characterized by its focus on material possessions. The Adventurists—rebellious and adventurous, members of this tribe love new challenges and energetic activities. Go With the Flow – Zen, balance, and leading a personally fulfilling life are their top priorities. The Dutifuls – this tribe includes people who are, above all, modest in everything they do. They place extra value on authenticity, honor, compassion, and trustworthiness. The Persistents – tribal members see themselves through the prism of dealing with life’s struggles, perseverance, the determination to move on, even against all odds.

Several speakers suggested introducing new types of control measures such as social media guidelines and new positions to monitor and manage rogue messages. Interestingly, companies such as noted rule-breaker Southwest Airlines and B2B icon SAP are moving in the opposite direction with a less is more approach. Rather than try to rein in communications, they have given their employees more freedom to express themselves and quickly experienced small wins that have helped build stronger reputations for their companies. For example, rumors were self-corrected by employees, stronger connections with customers were created, and employees felt more engaged in shaping their company.

This less is more approach is only effective when you have a strong culture focused on a deep and all-encompassing employee understanding of the company's vision. For this strategy to work effectively, employees need to be aligned with the messages you want to share and need to be invested in the success of the company.

brands considering where to focus their efforts and limited resources would do better to put less emphasis on putting more controls in place, and more effort toward helping employees better understand the CEO’s vision and what makes a company a special place to work. In the end, giving your employees the tools and freedom to spread that message and build your reputation makes more sense than reigning them in and holding them back.

Check out this demo of Wikitude, an augmented-reality travel guide, if you want to see what the future of mobile search looks like. By combining the camera on the phone with the built-in GPS and some fancy-schmancy programming, the Wikitude folks have come up with an application that gives you information about whatever you're pointing your phone at. In effect, your phone can become a virtual "window" on the world that merges the information about your location with the actual image of your location.

The applications for travel and tourism are obvious. You no longer have to blindly wander around a strange city wondering what you're looking at. Just point your phone at the monuments and buildings you see, and poof! There's all the historical information (and possibly even dates, times, and ticket prices) that you'd need. Analog and digital reality combined. Of course, the marketing applications for this are just as big. Systems like these (and I'm betting that they're going to be ubiquitous in new phones within a year or two) would allow marketers to place virtual "billboards" or information displays anywhere they want. Point your phone at a restaurant to get the times when it's open, a menu, and (with the touch of your finger on the display) make a reservation. Point your phone at a movie theater to get show times and buy your tickets with a tap of your finger. Look at a retail store and get a list of items on sale and even special "augmented-reality user only" coupons.

the decade of constructing the social layer is complete. The frameworks that we'll use to share socially are built, defined and controlled.

What's taking its place? The decade of games.

in this decade of games, these game dynamics will move far beyond your computer screen and into decidedly non-game like environments, like the way we court customers, engage with others at work, discover where to hang out on Saturday nights and what, when and how we choose to purchase.

When our emotional desires begin to shift toward a prospective brand, we align our reasons to be consistent with that intention. Our critical mind is always looking for evidence to support our beliefs. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the belief, and the greater the tendency is to seek out supporting evidence. We are not rational. We are rationalizers.

people in survey research and focus groups seek out reasons to explain their feelings about new products, concepts, and ads. Self-reported research shines the spotlight on their logical interpretation of emotion, rather than the motivators of behavior, the emotions themselves. Respondents and subsequently marketers often end up inventing rationalizations instead of big ideas.

Dyson now advises: “Don’t do market research--it will either tell you what you already know or put you off altogether.”

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."

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.

American Airlines has just rebranded for the first time in over 40 years. The AA logo of yore is gone, replaced by the Flight Symbol, a red and blue eagle crossed with a wing. And every plane will be tagged with a high-velocity abstraction of the American flag on its tail. There’s logic behind the decision: AA recently ordered 550 new planes. Many will have composite bodies that can’t be polished with the mirror shine of American’s existing fleet.

In approaching the redesign, American polled both their own employees about what defines the American brand (the answers were predominantly the planes’ silver fuselage and the eagle logo) and the larger globe about the American country (which is where tech, entertainment, and progress come in). What they were looking for was, not just what is American Airlines, but what is America in the age of globalization?

Futurebrand’s research also found that the American flag, of course, was another defining trait of America itself. The challenge was, how does American portray America without becoming blindly patriotic in the global market? The solution was a striped abstraction of our flag, augmented into a high-velocity graphic printed on each plane’s tail to make aircraft seem like they’re flying, even when they’re sitting still. In other words, they ditched the stars in favor of the stripes.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

In a 2010 study conducted by Harvard professor Bharat Anand, and Alezander Rosinski, they examined how the power of ads are influenced by the magazine or newspaper they appear in. By placing the same ad in the respected Economist and perhaps the less respected Huffington Post, they discovered that the more respected the publication, the more people would trust and recall the ad

As part of the experiment we'd asked our test family to adopt an environmentally conscious behavior. To assist them in this endeavor, we brought in experts to advise the family on changing their patterns of consumption. They taught them how to recycle and conserve. We wanted to see if it was possible to effect change amongst hundreds of families' daily routine by introducing new behaviors at the highest levels of trust--from the experts down. In other words, could a single family's environmentally conscious behavior set the standard for their social circle and thus create widespread change? The answer was a clear and resounding "Yes!" Close to 31% of the thousands of people affected by the experimental family changed their recycling and conserving habits.

Deep trust is communicated subconsciously. It's rarely expressed explicitly, nor is imparted loudly or didactically. To trust deeply not only can change our minds, but it has the power to alter our most ingrained behaviors. It's a subtle emotion that the average commercial message fails to embody

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

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.