But, what is a brand? We use the word all the time, but what do we mean by “brand”? How do we define a brand when thinking of brand promotions?

At Upshot, we define a brand as a promise. What’s great about thinking this way is that it puts it in a context of human terms—it’s easy to understand get your consumers to invest in. And the deeper you get into this notion, the more it brings out the emotion, the human connection inherent in consumers’ relationship with brands, which is vital as social media becomes more and more central to people’s lives.

Go deeper and a brand is not only a promise, but a promise from seller to buyer, built on understanding and rooted in emotion and trust.

A brand is a promise from a seller to a buyer
The brand is the “mark” a seller gives of this promise to the buyer. It’s an interaction with a mutual benefit—yes, the buyer has a need the seller is fulfilling, but the buyer isn’t expecting it to be met with altruism and recognizes the seller also gets something of equal value.

A brand is built on understanding
Branding begins with engaging with people constantly blurring their life experiences. From workplace to home, with friends and with family, people are continually shifting their perspectives and expectations. Essentially, people are ever-changing. Understanding these ever-changing people is the first building block of branding. You’d never be able to make a meaningful promise to someone unless you really knew that person and the different perspectives they enact throughout their day.

A brand is rooted in emotion and trust
Great brands appeal both to the head and to the heart. Emotion is another critical piece of branding.  People must feel comfortable about your brand, that it delivers what you are promising. That it reflects you and your personality it the best way possible. And that takes trust—a quality that takes time to win and can be lost in a second. Let’s keep it personal. A promise from someone you don’t trust is worthless.

So, why care about the brand now?
Three powerful business trends in today’s marketplace are making brands and brand marketing a priority.

Product differentiation. Any aisle in any store contains a mind-numbing array of choices, regardless of what you’re looking for.  Every major brand offers every permutation of a given product so consumers are left with little to no product differentiation. That leaves only brand differentiation to base decisions on—something a well thought out brand articulation and/or promotion can bring to life.  Without it, which brand to purchase could be boiled down to whether blue or red goes better in the kitchen. Or worse, which is cheaper.

Shorter product life cycles. The time between category adoption and brand preference has collapsed. The obvious example is the electronics category, where new technology drives life cycles, but this happens across virtually all consumer categories. You need to get your brand entrenched in consumer minds before you’re outnumbered and surrounded.

Growth of private label. The combination of better quality, consumer acceptance, and economic climate has set up private label to grow, and grow impressively, at the expense of accepted brands. They span basics to premium, and more and more consumers not only purchasing them but embracing them as their “go-to” choice. With space at such a premium, both at the literal shelf and in consumers’ minds, having a brand grounded in emotion, understanding and trust is more important than ever to ensure consumer preference over overtly rational private label products.

Brands and branding are central to the entire marketing spectrum
In an Integrated Marketing world, it’s important to keep in mind that brands and branding are central to all the work done across the entire spectrum of marketing—that’s above, below, through and all around the line. In fact, the “line” gets more and more irrelevant every day. And consumers don’t distinguish between the marketing they see that’s above or below this “line”. Keep the brand at the center of all their efforts to not only ensure its integration, but also consumer acceptance, receptivity to the message and overall engagement beyond mere purchase.

Remember that any brand-based efforts require both rational and emotional motivators. Relevant consumer insights must be tapped to ensure an emotional connection to the brand. Simple ideas need to be expertly executed across all tactics and touch points. Finally, all constituents (manufacturer, retailers, agency partners) need to collaborate as one.

http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/dont-break-internet

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/SOPA/Blackoutpage

If you’re into music. Check out the 40 free holiday tracks from Paste Magazine. You can stream the playlist download the entire compilation featuring tracks from Deer Tick, She & Him, The Polyphonic Spree, Damien Jurado, Nicole Atkins and more.  Sourced from our friend (and Upshot alumni) over at Popservations.

If you’re into television. Check out the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast via their website or iTunes. Led by Monkey See blogger, Linda Holmes the podcast covers art, culture, media and fun. We dig it for the best coverage of television (both good and bad) out there!

If you’re into fashion. And celebrities, go browse the Go Fug Yourself blog. The writers—Heather and Jessica—are full of wit, sarcasm and diet coke. It’s just plain pure fun. And great to kill time while waiting for your delayed flight in the airport.

If you’re into trends. Of the consumer and marketing kind, that is. Check out Upshot’s 2012 Trends Report. It provides ten relevant, actionable marketing trends to inspire consumers, shoppers, and business people to act in 2012.

Tell us a few of your favorite things!

Welcome to Upshot’s 2012 Trends Report! We’re so glad you could make it.

After you’ve clicked the link above and given your brain a totally unfair advantage, please be excessively generous about passing around this trend report. Click right here and we’ll automatically tweet on your behalf, or just pass the following link around to friends, family, followers, foes, and former flings: j.mp/upshot2012.

Here’s a quick peek at our 10 course menu for 2012:

• Guruism (SourceRank 83): Will your brand be the go-to guide on a given topic?
• Collective Curation (SourceRank 91): Credible brands can become hubs for Collective Curation, bringing a focused theme to life through the voices of others.
• Anarchy in the Aisle (SourceRank 82): The Path to Purchase is dead. Long live the Path to Purchase.
• Mindfulness over Matter (SourceRank 65): Situated between a tumultuous past and an uncertain future, consumers are increasingly finding solace in the present moment.
• Seamless Tech (SourceRank 60): Technology-enhanced marketing will increasingly provide seamless, simple experiences.
• Gender Bender (SourceRank 68): Between better-educated women, drastic household changes, and shifting collar colors in the workplace, traditional gender roles are fast becoming relics.
• Cause with Effect (SourceRank 82): With the lingering threat of a “cause bubble,” cause marketing must increasingly focus on making relevant, visible, and inspiring impacts.
• World of Wellness (SourceRank 80): Brands must reevaluate their roles in the diverse wellness ecosystem, ensuring that they’re contributing to a better quality of life for consumers.
• Recession Rejection (SourceRank 86): Shoppers are on a quest for control. And when they set their sights on smaller, more personal spheres, they’re optimistic about their prospects.
• Hack My Brand (SourceRank 53): Marketers are embracing benevolent hacking for innovative, entertaining, and practical solutions.

Keep checking back in with The Awesome Blog to see how these trends grow and evolve throughout 2012. For now, enjoy!

Stay tuned. Full 2012 trends report arrives soon.

According to their website, Benetton’s Unhate Foundation “Seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values”.  The foundation’s website boasts future plans of a Global Unhate Day, and a giant “Unhate Dove” fabricated entirely out of recycled war bullets.

While taking on all of the hatred in the world could certainly do us all a little good and the campaign is sparking conversation around the globe, Benetton’s commitment to making a legitimate impact is a steep goal. Sure, they’re doing an excellent job of creating (both positive and negative) buzz about their brand and potentially even enticing consumers to purchase their exceedingly pricey clothing, but it is safe to say that a bunch of unorthodox ads will likely fall short of creating world peace. Consumers are looking for causes where their contributions may have a real effect on a final outcome. Knowing the amount of press and simple word of mouth viral activity the ads have created in a matter of weeks, it will be interesting to see how Benetton’s campaign to change the world plays out over the next several months.

Click the image below for the full-size infographic!

In January, 2011, Starbucks launched its Mobile Card payment program available on most smartphones. SMART. No doubt you’re already on your phone at 8:30 in the morning while ordering a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte, so it’s easy to flash your “Touch to Pay” barcode and be on your way. The app replaces your reloadable Starbucks card (while keeping your rewards intact), and you can preload it from your bank account within the same screen.

With the release of Google Wallet, users can now pay with a simple tap at Mastercard paypass terminals. For now, this is advancement only for those with Google phones…and a Citi Mastercard. But, with this technological groundbreaking device, users are also able to receive offers and store loyalty points via the app.  We’re attached to our phones, so what better way to reach us directly when we’re making a transaction.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shopkick offers rewards for simply stepping inside a store and scoping out merchandise. It displays deals and discounts close in proximity to your location. The more you peruse, the more points are earned for redemptions ranging from clothes to electronics.

While cashless-ness becomes the norm, we can only assume that consumers will rely less on the benjamins, but let’s not forget about Future Fear. A lot of emphasis is placed on convenience and practicality when we look at technological enhancements. It’s our job to find the perfect balance between convenience and trust.

What we can gather from our own shopping habits is that we rely heavily on the convenience factor, no doubt about it. We’ve become increasingly comfortable with everything being accessible through our phones. We can purchase a Groupon, find our way to Alaska and back, and even count the steps we take around the office with our smartphones.

“What? I can’t just show you the e-mail, I have to print it out?!”

As marketers, we should reach our consumers as soon as they walk into the store, making it harder not to refuse a great deal on the very same phone used to swipe and pay. It has been reported that 20% of smartphone users have compared prices while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. Additionally, 15% of smartphone users have redeemed a mobile coupon (ladies more so than gentlemen). Let’s take advantage of these time-saving, less paper-wasting social platforms that deliver instantaneous results without hassle. Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, so creating more convenient methods of in-store redemption and offers will put us ahead of the game—and the checkout line.

What will it take for YOU to go CASH-LESS?

It’s Potty Posting time! Need a refresher on the purpose of the Po

These monthly articles take a humorous, yet informative, approach to emerging cultural trends, new technologies, and innovative marketing tactics. And yes, they’re posted in the Upshot bathrooms, where we know we’ve got a captive audience. Click the image to the right for a PDF of the post and share with your network to build your Klout, duh.

You Know You Make Me Wanna Klout

To over 3500 brands, the world of online social networking is beginning to look a lot like a high school. Cliques are forming, popularity is becoming a tool, Lindsay Lohan is giving high-calorie nutrition bars to the Plastic Queen to sabotage her weight and status…

OK, maybe not that last part. But, when it comes to social media, brands are paying attention to the widening gap between those who matter online and those who don’t. By targeting the people who are most likely to influence others – the ones who inspire the most buzz with their tweets and posts – brands can maximize their reach while putting in minimal cost and effort. In essence, this online popularity contest could be the key to doing word-of-mouth marketing right, and Klout, a social metrics service, was made to do just that.

The aforementioned Plastic Queen, Regina George, owns a silver Lexus and allegedly does car commercials in Japan. She’s also teen royalty. So not only is she pretty popular, she’s also pretty influential. Now, if only there were quantifiable data to tell Mercedes how influential Regina George really is, especially on the topic of cars, so they can give her a free SL550 Roadster in the hopes that she ditches that Lexus and tweets about her new Mercedes.

“My Klout Score is so fetch, I haven’t paid for anything in months!”

Bingo. Klout is a website run by a team of digital engineers, marketers and analysts who have made it possible to quantify a person’s online influence, or ability to drive action on the internet. Taking data from a person’s social networking accounts, Klout measures True Reach (how many people someone influences), Amplification (how much that person influences them), and Network Impact (the influence of the people being influenced), with a single number between 1 and 100 as the result.

No longer is the internet democratic. No longer does everyone’s voice hold equal weight online. And far from being ashamed about being the harbinger of online social inequality, Klout is actually partnering up with thousands of brands to take advantage of it!

Brands have started using Klout to give away free stuff, “Klout Perks,” to the most popular influencers (or social networking users) in their fields and provide them with a good experience or a good product so they can tweet about it to their friends. For example, HP offered high-scoring film influencers an HP laptop pre-loaded with films from Cinequest film festival, and Audi invited top design, technology and luxury influencers to test drive their new 2011 Audi A8 at exclusive events.

Yeah, but does it work? Influencers who receive Perks aren’t required to post positive things about the brand. They’re not even required to post anything at all.

To ensure that giving away Perks will be worth a company’s expense, Klout has begun to up the demand and cool factor of a high Score and the Perks that come with it. When Spotify, a wildly popular music-streaming service, first came out in 2008, Klout gave free account access to only some of its high-scorers before Spotify was even released in the United States. In addition, some special events, like the annual after-hours shopping extravaganza, Fashion’s Night Out, require a Klout Score of over 40 points in order to attend. This not only ensures the exclusivity and coolness of the Perk, but the honor of having a high Score as well.

And it has definitely been working for a ton of brands. Like Virgin America, who offered only 120 free flights to top travel influencers, which generated over 4,600 tweets and, subsequently, led to over 7.4 million impressions and coverage in top blogs and news outlets. And, for a very small price, that’s good business.

But it hasn’t just been working for brands. While Klout’s expertise in generating buzz has been great for building brands’ reputations, it’s also been building their own. People have been putting their Score on their resume and many competitors and copycats have begun to emerge, like PeerIndex , Twitter Grader and, most recently, PeopleBrowsr’s Kred, which will up your Kred based on real-life achievements like degrees and awards.

“People have even started attaching it to their wardrobes. Ladies love it.”

And while there certainly are downsides for the people being judged on their Score, there are also downsides for brands. How does a brand do damage control when a top influencer receives a product, hates it, and blasts the company on Twitter? The best response is to turn it positive – using Klout, brands can decide which reviews they can ignore and which they need to address. 70% of companies ignore their customer complaints on Twitter, yet nearly half of Twitter complainants expect the company to read them. Plus, 83% of complainants on Twitter who have received a reply either liked or loved the fact that the company responded.  So, when a brand comes across a bad review from a top influencer, they should see it as a great PR opportunity.

While the concept of Klout is certainly proving to be integral to brand marketing, its underlying foundation is nothing new. They’ve recognized social group behaviors and separated the popular from the ordinary, but by mathematically proving the amount of a person’s popularity, Klout is able to help brands single out the people who will, hopefully, inspire action and do a good chunk of their marketing for them. And therein lies the innovation:  realizing the marketing potential of good ol’ fashioned cliquishness brought into the modern, digital age.

Want another good Klout read? Take a gander at OMG! Your Klout is Showing! posted earlier this year by Jaclyn Gordyan.

Many hotels are already offering experience-based rewards in their loyalty programs and enhanced concierge services to assist guests with discovering the world outside of the hotel. Instead of stockpiling points for a free night’s stay, members of these programs can earn cultural activities, like going backstage before a performance at the Peking Opera or spending the day with a professional bullfighter. Some loyalty programs even offer express experiences specifically designed for business travelers who may only have an hour or two to spare but who still want to go home with at least one memorable insight into the destination they visited.

Additionally, several startups have recently emerged to meet the wanderlusty needs of travelers by offering trip curation tools, local knowledge and a much-needed dose of personalization to the online trip planning process.

Launched in April, Vayable connects travelers with tour guides offering unique and intimate local experiences, like scouting Montmartre street art in Paris or visiting sample sales in NYC with a fashion insider. By allowing these independent guides to sell their local knowledge, Vayable is redefining the tour and activity segment of the travel market.

And then there’s Fortnighter, also launched this year, which provides (for a fee) made-to-order itineraries from professional travel writers based on the user’s dates of travel, interests and budget. Fortnighter brings currency, personalization and expert knowledge to the travel planning table and allows users to steer clear of the unreliability of algorithms and user reviews.

A slew of other services have also cropped up recently. All of this suggests that the travel experience marketplace is heating up, and there appears to be room for more. When looking across the dreaming, researching, booking, experiencing and sharing travel cycle, what kind of product or service can you offer that will assist travelers with collecting those sought-after experiences? How do you evoke the moments that inspire us when we travel? How do you help deliver more authentic travel experiences?