#i have no idea how or why the version i acquired is both the snowy edit and in greyscale hahaha

[himemeiya]

Merry Christmas! I keep this framed print of Anthy and Utena up all year round but I especially love that it doubles as seasonal decor ❄️

[harley623gaming-blog]

Never Spend Your VBUCKS Again

'My Child Spent £150 On Fortnite'

Fortnite is one of the most popular activity in present, with an estimated 12m+ active monthly players. Fortnite rules and reports aren't being offered widely on top darknet marketplaces, through what I found. They're on Ebay They're on They're on Selly. How much change is someone making off this? Hackers I interviewed about everywhere from $50 to $900 a week, depending on how help ones software is real also the amount time you have. V-Bucks can be acquired in Fortnite by completing daily in-game problems or bought online.

Your neighbors will come into play because time goes next to. Anyone need to dine them popular next construct clear relations with them to help affect your community career overall. If you have bedroom to number a job use Fortnite V Bucks Hack to hide the price and take on good connections with them. For mobile players with Android, Fortnite really move a whole lot easier to play. Instead of having to depend upon the on-screen buttons, Fortnite has added controller funds for Android.

Some legal enterprises may be using Fortnite 's virtual currency to wash funds. The Sovereign documents that confidence company Sixgill found evidence of criminals purchasing V-bucks in form using stolen credit cards, then offer the V-Bucks to participants at a discounted time to change it into "clean" money. Note: Please do not install any kind of hacks and certainly not press upon any hacking links. If anyone outside Fortnite claims to sell you V-Bucks for real change, tell that toward Fortnite right now because paying anyone claiming to offer you V-Bucks can lead to the loss of your money.

Why VBUCKS Succeeds

Fortnite gift card is a pre-paid card. The cards contains rules for a set quantity of V-Bucks. Fortnite is far from the first or individual contest to say that job going on. Last year, Naked Security reported that many free-to-play games http://margalo782blog.aircus.com/boost-your-vbucks-with-these-ideas at mobile means were truly being ended and used in the same manner with fake credit card grip of electronic currency to be resold on third-party markets at a lower price.

Epic is creating X-Ray Llamas to Fortnite's But the planet way so to participants can tell the insides before they believe. Epic Games continues to support Fortnite with some big subject matter with differences almost with a continuous basis. Update 8.10 put new weapons with things on the game, but since it seems, they have other important improvements in the pipeline as well.

A Buried Treasure object is going rapidly” to Fortnite, according to the latest in-game News message. Rub the isle for hidden loot with the original Buried Treasure thing,” the letter reads. Type ‘Fort' into the search shaft with click on Fortnite: Battle Royale as it seems in the suggestions field for the real. Fortnite © 2018 Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Engine, and Fortnite are joined hallmarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the USA (Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Away.) with away.

Both another year gets its Battle Pass that gives you door to further items, concern, and in-game currency. While people should pay attention to how long is go to run on a season, it's a worthwhile investment if you discover the Fortnite bug. After all, 200 thousand people can easily be wrong. While the game itself is free to play, participants may manage V-Bucks to purchase cosmetic items and unlock characteristics in "Fortnite." Yet the digital currency is a strong commodity — players spend more than $200 million a month in V-Bucks.

That a very predictable thing to happen, but this fact is worth celebration anyway - Fortnite Battle Royale PvP for 100 players is completely interface to iOS, and Machine mobile platforms with most PC version features entered. This issue proves, to cell devices can be worked because gaming systems of comprehensive help. The leaks include new energy for the already heavy sacks of conjecture that Epic Games say a bit good prepared for the upcoming winter period with Fortnite, which many have estimated can include snowy terrain.

Along with all the daily login rewards mentioned above, One can easily find bonus reward treating the stall mentioned below. On this point day fortnite giveaway special prize toward the player as rare heroes and survivor. One other common practice on the scam involves ‘V-Bucks Generators,' which are pages with websites where Fortnite persons are encouraged to enter their individual information, including their own financial details.

Videogame review website Eurogamer state this gave accepted Fortnite about two weeks going to the 10-million-player mark. The first step to follow is to remove the BattlEye development for the Fortnite game. Sweeney: We affect a Fortnite non-event peak twice after Top stayed out there. We include noticed any obvious drop into Fortnite. That a gag thing. The only game you can see where its peaks drop into Fortnite playtime is FIFA. It's another match for anyone, wildly popular around the world.

There will a new Fortnite Battle Pass, hand people contact to new Time 8 skins and Period 8 emotes - given people and then put in the time with crack to next unlock them, of course. This also worth emphasizing the value of unique Fortnite's PVE component, Save The World. It's pretty pricey at $39.99, but it usually goes by seasonal sales designed for a $19.99 so be sure people own an eye out.

Other scams include selling log on toward other people's Fortnite story, and compromise V-Bucks for free - but really charging for it. Parents will be secure with unexpected bills as their adolescents are spending income at in-game purchases for the success video game Fortnite without their learning - and in some cases kids when children as several get hit big sums. If your baby plays Fortnite, here's making sure they're not waste your income without authorization.

Season 6 of Fortnite: Battle Royale has certainly been eventful with a number of momentous occasions. As the name advise, you make that before securing a bout during the course of Fortnite Season 8. Remember that LTMs (Limited Time Modes) do not count - instead, you need to accomplish a Single, Duos or Squads match. Although several can argue that Epic has to make everything they may to keep casual players - one of the largest pieces of the Fortnite player population - happy, others believe that it practice can be damaging to the title's health.

1 ‘To help step any desired measure of Fortnite V Bucks Hack open so click here at ‘Get Fortnite V Bucks” Button below, you might make free what just you are looking for. The first Fortnite World Cup is scheduled to course in 2019 , and may as well remain offered to non-pro players, though there will be a certification process to ensure that just very best can compete. Gameplay will heart on alone and twice play.

Fortnite: Battle Royale Season 8, Week 5 is right now officially live and with that another batch of weekly obstacle to destroy the pirate land into. Avast me hearties, 'tis time to make Battle Legends with even up the Battle Pass. Complete 55 weekly concerns and you'll unlock the surprise Discovery Outfit. Fortnite Battle Royale is available by Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Samsung Android devices while Save the planet is free about NOTEBOOK and consoles platforms.

5 Features To Simplify VBUCKS

To perform Fortnite toward the total potential, you don't really need a particularly good PC. The biggest advantage Epic Sports own with Fortnite is the cartoon art way they wanted, which will not require a good deal of hardware even though it provides a good whole experience. Fortnite players will be ended by common media scammers who are using websites claiming to offer free in-game currency, known as V-Bucks, to take over balance and pilfer personal data.

Investigators from Malwarebytes exposed in April to scammers are using data-stealing malware as well as cryptocurrency-stealing malicious signal with targeted arguments against Fortnite gamers. For 4K gaming with Fortnite and other activities, however, anything with a little more processing strength is told. Something like the i7-9700K or at least the i5-9600K would be a solid preference regarding a higher-performing rig.

In the ocean of tape games, Fortnites free-to-play basis did it somewhat of a boost, although it is additional parts are what helped the game prosper. Let's take a further look at what these new contributing tools are. iOS: Since Fortnite is available from the iOS App Keep, the iTunes gift cards is the best answer now. The Fortnite leader for Heroes , Missions , Rewards and more produced and continued with the participants.

According to Epic, it will "appear as a free item for you to call in the in-game Fortnite store" once you have participated the game. Whether that so simple as charge the app for the telephone is uncertain, but it sounds very easy each means. The rig is to ensure all the required DLLs are present with the application you want. With Fortnite, this will be lots of; the dose is to enable Epic Games' own tools do the job.

A great website that causes Fortnite V-bucks with no further efforts appreciate this website and hundreds of cool Gadgets which I can buy using V-bucks. However, as gamers rally at Fortnite Battle Royale and continue to survive as one of the final five-to-ten players of game, they will find that Fortnite Battle Royale's endgames can be just as complicated, if not more so, than PUBG's, for one very particular purpose: building.

Experience Battle Royale with contemporary with single streets with both Limited Time Mode. Join forces with approximately 49 other players with 50v50 or fight your disputes with only legendary loot with Concrete Gold. Anything is possible in Fortnite. Just like any other battle royale that you have always played, Fortnite also shares the same perspective about allowing the players buy goods like new characters, new skins, new costumes and much more with the help of a personal currency called V-Bucks.

[markjsousa]

5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, there are valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original maker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbo

[glenmenlow]

5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, there are valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original maker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbo

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/5-ways-to-surely-kill-brand-meaning/ via IFTTT

[joejstrickl]

5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, there are valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original maker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbo

[inoisilynoisycollection-blog]

Wide Width Booties & Ankle Boots For Women.

For a pedestrian both points you should solve are your water-proof coat, and your strolling boots. The Merrell Moab Ventilator has an excellent amount of extra padding around the tops of the shoes that creates a tight fit and also a lines the tongue, making this a extremely comfy and useful pair of hiking footwear, with unabridged, compression-molded EVA midsoles that provide all-day support and padding. It would certainly be terrific if REI can show clients an ecological footprint range for each item, like H&M's sustainable brand clothing Reformation does. These boots are additionally made with a 5mm lug on the Vibram rubber outsoles for superior traction while on the path. Why you'll enjoy them: Unless you plunge them into water that's deeper compared to their surge, the Columbia Daska Pass III Titanium Outdry Extreme boots merely won't allow your feet get wet. Nonetheless, this is not to state that soft toe work boots do not provide any other protective features. For cooler as well as possibly snowy conditions you have to make sure your boots are water resistant while hotter problems might call for open footwear or lighter material. Hello there Cynthia, The boots will likely be well worn in by previous travelers that employed them, yet the form will clearly not have molded your foot account so it is possible that they may massage and also be somewhat uncomfortable. One of the first choices in selecting treking footwear is picking either an over-the-ankle boot or low-top footwear. The backpacking boot is much more resilient given that it is intended for use by knowledgeable walkers on 1 to 4 day treking journeys over variable surface. On the various other end of the spectrum, some lightweight boots do not have this additional framework, instead looking like a high, versatile hiking shoe. It is additionally a great set of job boots if your workplace needs such footwear. Experienced hikers will certainly inform you that the distinction between having a satisfying hiking trip and also a not so delightful journey is the kind of treking shoes that you buy to place on your feet. best women's walking boots reviews or heavy duty boots are likewise referred to as mountaineering or technological boots. Low-cut walking footwear are light-weight, adaptable as well as offer the added ankle joint flexibility needed to overcome day hikes comfortably. Nevertheless, the majority of people make the mistake of acquiring little safety toe boots with the lost idea that they will eventually barge in and stretch out. If you're new to the whole event, this guide on just how to select the best womens hiking boots is a list to aid obtain you started. The material of the treking boot is very important to think about as different products do in different ways. There are various brands of boots that are made particularly for treking. Asolo Boots are developed around the foot; adaptable, light-weight and also at the same time, immune. In any case you need to guarantee you have the appropriate shoes readily available, nothing defeats a great pair of Guy's Hiking Boots. When you will certainly require the added ankle joint as well as foot support to be able to handle the extra weight of your gear, hefty backpacking boots are best fit for lengthy backpacking trips. Guarantee your job boots have a sole that is resistant to up to 1100N of penetration pressure. I review whatever here pertaining to hiking boots, but I still have a couple of concerns for you. In addition, a boot make of strong material will last longer and also you desire have to get another pair as quickly as if you acquired an affordable pair of boots. Mid-cut Boots: These types of boots are high sufficient to wrap around your ankle joints and also offer some protection to your ankles. If you run out time to undergo some boring buying overview, you should have a look at our collection of light-weight hiking boots for 2017. One version that constantly obtains rave testimonials when it concerns the water resistant factor is the Women's Lowa Renegade GTX, which is additionally really breathable and extremely lightweight.

[alisianagle0-blog]

Purposeful Fashion jewelry

As you're possibly mindful, purposeful make use of refers to use of electronic health and wellness file (EHR) technology to improve the top quality and efficiency of person treatment. Observing the credit report problem, the amount of people who preferred to earn a relevant living raised. And also teasing is a common way of connecting and corresponding that resembles an overlooked foreign language that guys talk. If you want to discover purposeful job, you have to lose hope the idea of carrying out one thing HUGE. By means of hymns and praise, these tracks try and also fulfill people's religious as well as mental demands. There are various other wonderful man Hindu labels to pick from with several relevant interpretations including Aashish (Good thing), Bijoy (Filled with joy), Chiman (Interested), Strong (Light), Ekagrah (Centered), Gandhik (Aroma), Hardik (Loaded with passion), Jawahar (Jewel), Mitrajit (Welcoming), Navrang (Multicolored), Paran (Life), Rasul (Angel), Sadhil (Perfect), Tuhin (Snowy), Umang (Need), Vatsa (Kid), as well as Yamir (Moon). The men in question had actually been actually observing my daily quotes for concerning 8 months. But a lot more vital in comparison to its own lovely appeal, the directory was a strong selling tool. While composing a memory poem yourself is actually constantly a meaningful effort, there are actually numerous recollection poems offered that can accurately as well as appropriately convey those message you are actually trying to communicate-whether this be just one of sadness, recognition, or even hope. The Temple of My Acquainted is a richly vivid yard of stories that involve complicated characters as well as common obstacles that are actually both beautiful as well as frightening. By doing this, you re saving opportunity, delivering a better notification that is going to certainly be even more relevant compared to anything else you can purchase, or even find in a retail store, and also you ll be actually placing a countenance the recipient s encounter - whoever that might be actually. Several of the greatest men and women to encounter for a connection carry out certainly not most likely to clubs - they come across folks with various tasks, like food preparation courses or even book teams or hiking clubs. Several of the best stunning Aztec metal craftsmanship can be checked out to this day through amazing ear spools or even connects meant for usage with assessed ears. Purposeful communication projects such as this strengthen the psychological bond in between the label and also individuals, installing Petrobras as a crucial endorsement for Brazilians. I am actually Dr Francesca Zampollo, and also I gone on a purpose: picking up Meaningful Food Stories. Certainly not surprisingly, many of the absolute most meaningful companies have transformeded their markets or are actually undertaking an improvement. There are actually lot of present sites in the Web where you could search for deciding on a relevant as well as ideal present accordinged to various groups. Xmas quotes and also xmas sayings are the greatest method to celebrtae this divine event, Right here uniquechristmas cards phrases for your beloved and also business christmas sayings for your colleagues. To have significant communication along with youth, moms and dads must have the best mindset. This is actually effortless as well as quick, and the cards are actually adjustable, therefore can submit some of your youngster's illustrations onto the present card and create an individualized keep in mind. I carried out not necessarily have to provide hand written notes on a daily basis, but kind words regarding why I was actually grateful to know all of them could possibly have been shared much more regularly. The text message is actually to the point considering that that needs due to the fact that this doesn't possess too many phrases since that is succinct. The fad and practice of sending out xmas sayings is also climbing yet that possesses without a doubt came to be a well-known way from sharing your affection and cozy cheery wants with the lovable terms. They deliver social media control so that they may connect with the target audience as well as interact them in a meaningful means. An additional characteristic from meaningful job is that you acknowledge its value and also others will too. Certainly, there are a lot more stunning labels to choose from consisting of Alpana (Lovely), Bimala (Sheer), Chahna (Affection), Devanshi (Divine), Fulki (Glow), Grishma (Heat), Ipsita (Desire), Kala (Craft), Lalima (Appeal), Mitali (Pleasant), Nirali (Different), Panchali (Princess), Sarayu (Wind), Usha (Sunrise), and also Venya (Charming). There are actually various other beautiful man Hindu titles to pick from with several significant translations consisting of Aashish (Benefit), Bijoy (Packed with pleasure), Chiman (Curious), Rich (Lightweight), Ekagrah (Focused), Gandhik (Scent), Hardik (Filled with passion), Jawahar (Gem), Mitrajit (Helpful), Navrang (Multicolored), Paran (Lifestyle), Rasul (Angel), Sadhil (Perfect), Tuhin (Snowy), Umang (Need), Vatsa (Boy), as well as Yamir (Moon). The remainder of the documentation describes the methods that third-party products can easily make use of to satisfy these Meaningful Usage (MU2) goals utilizing HealthVault. To reveal the meaningful use of the Electronic Wellness Document modern technology effectively, the allowed experts, qualified medical facilities as well as CAHs must report the professional high quality actions which are administered primarily to all of them. If you loved this report and you would like to acquire more facts pertaining to yellow pages advertising - just click the up coming internet page, kindly stop by the website. No one can ever trump Angelina Jolie along with a lot more or even less 12 designs decorating her remarkable system when it happens to designs. The honor requires certainly not be actually sizable, yet it needs to be significant and appropriate for the celebration. Influencer advertising and marketing is a platform where significant individuals in a particular industry are utilized to connect with the mass amount of individuals in a meaningful technique. One of her popular designs includes that from a necromancy filled in Khmer on the back of her shoulder. The Unicef Gift Shop has a terrific option from beautiful cards as well as presents that gain their work. To get in touch with your notions on meaningful work write every thing that enters your mind about exactly what the standard opinion from the condition purposeful job is actually. That might be actually handy to document titles of folks which seem considerable and also why. Requests could begin with the DOPU design, and if the scenarios expand past Meaningful Use along with HealthVault, they may back then adjustment to make use of a document authorization-based version. If you're participating in the Medicaid program, you can easily Embrace, Execute, or even Upgrade (AIU) an accredited EHR or demonstrate purposeful use one in your 1st year to gain motivations. There is certainly not a well established rulebook on just how you discover your meaningful job and also resulting success. We possess numerous kinds of enchanting quotations - from funny, humorous, smart, relevant and also sweet ... to saddening quotes, break up, uplifting, complex, and also more. Folks not only share Christmas grant each other but also share their X-mas wants as well as messages in distinct as well as various methods. This is actually even more a trivia video game to understand that Jane suggests God is thoughtful or even that Alexander implies protector from men or that George means the planet worker or that Erin indicates off Ireland. For instance, knowing a listing of nonce words or even lexicons can be established by means of subjective interpretations from these phrases or groups. They profit from tracks and rhymes that provide the base for comprehending just how foreign language functions. However, if you have a niche, if, perhaps, you're in the nursery business as well as you view the end results from your job making the world better ... If you are actually aiding folks develop as well as cultivate their artistic capacities, or even if you are actually using your very own imaginative abilities so that you make the planet much better ... currently, this may be exactly what I categorize as relevant job.

[glenmenlow]

5 Ways To Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, they contain valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original marker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbolic principles of design, symmetry, integrity and values that the brand itself was built upon. There are

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/5-ways-to-kill-brand-meaning/ via IFTTT

[joejstrickl]

5 Ways To Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, they contain valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original marker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbolic principles of design, symmetry, integrity and values that the brand itself was built upon. There are