This document discusses modern approaches to brand building in a digital world. It emphasizes the importance of consumer empathy, marketing experiences outside of products, and focusing on business fundamentals and digital experiences. It also stresses that strategy is ongoing while tactics may change, and that brands must avoid impermanence by grounding their purpose in how their values overlap with consumers.

1. Brand Building
in a Digital World

3. “You know you’re going to be
irrelevant by the time you’re 40, right?”

4. Maybe.
You decide.

5. Strategy is ongoing,
tactics sometimes change
always
must be

6. A modern take
on brand building
Consumer empathy
Business fundamentals
Marketing as product
Digital experiences

7. A modern take
on brand building
Marketing as product
Build experiences just outside
the product that engage people
based on the core human need
the product is addressing.
Confidently state why you’re in
business, what you’re doing
to help people and how the
product accomplishes this.
Make these engagements
beautiful by investing in UX
and design as much as you
do for the actual product.
Marketers should approach
marketing as if it were a product.
By doing these things, you’ll blend marketing and
product to the point where people don’t realize the difference.

8. Before we
get into it

9. Digital is a great place
to build your brand.
(and business)

10. 5 YEARS
If you have a $10 product
with 70% margins, it’s hard to
acquire a customer.
If you have a $150 product
with 70% margins, you can
acquire a customer for $50
and still be wildly profitable.
Either you are giving away
margin to a retailer or you’re
spending it to acquire a
customer.
Jake Kassan
Founder, MVMT

11. Consumer behavior trends
outpace marketing plans.
Digital research gives us intuition
about the pulse of today’s consumer
“What you think it is” is better
than “what you think it should be”
Traditional research and
planning validates status quo

12. A new marketing plan is
like buying a new car.
It loses value immediately
after you close your Google Sheet.

13. Brands create campaigns to drive
awareness and illuminate newness
An expectation to do something
without a sense of permanence
Brand purpose turned into action
refocuses attention to how our values
overlap with what brands are doing
Modern marketers avoid
campaign impermanence

14. Understanding impermanence is
the twin sister of understanding art.
All art, as we’ve seen, brings
something new into the world, but
that newness can’t remain, or there
would be no room for more art.
Newness fades.

15. A modern take
on brand building
Consumer empathy
Business fundamentals
Marketing as product
Digital experiences

17. “In the midst of a big holiday brainstorming session,
the head of our merchandising group said, 'We could
never do it, but what if we close on Black Friday?’”

18. “Obviously at face value it seems crazy, but it was all about giving
our people the day off and inviting others to join us. Part of this job
is about storytelling, but when you can take an action and show
people rather than just telling them, it can be really powerful.”

19. Hello. We plan to close all of our
stores on Black Friday. Thoughts?
To: Venables Bell & Partners
From: Ben Steele
Subject: Creative Brief

20. “From there, it stopped being about closing the stores and
became about getting people to go outside."
~ Lee Einhorn, Creative Director, VB&P

21. It became about more
than just us and Black
Friday and more about
individual choices.
~ Will McGinness, Partner, VB&P

23. Traffic Sales

29. A modern take
on brand building
Consumer empathy
Business fundamentals
Marketing as product
Digital experiences

31. Strategy is ongoing,
tactics sometimes change
always
must be

32. Irrelevant by 40?
Not to my kids.Yet.

33. Brand Building
in a Digital World