There has never been more pressure for organizations to differentiate themselves and create loyal customers. With a growing desire by consumers to both have increasingly personalized experiences, and to share the values and culture of the companies they both buy from and work for, brands need to evolve in order to thrive. Agile brands will balance the need for control over their messaging, products and services with the need to connect with their customers in more meaningful ways.

In most professions, being “busy” is actually a good thing, because it means you are needed, and there are enough customers or clients to keep the lights on. But there’s a more toxic form of busy that keeps great work from happening, deadlines from being met, and work relationships from thriving. To help, let’s define a vocabulary that makes this easier. Being busy means that you’re running around from task to task, continually feeling overwhelmed, late to meetings, and overdue on assignments and tasks. Let’s treat that as the negative way of looking at things.

Jeff Bezos famously said, “your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” It’s true that a company or organization cannot control people’s opinions, feelings, perceptions or reactions to everything it does. A strong brand can help provide a common way for people to think and talk about your company, product, or services. Let’s explore a few ways that your brand is more than the sum of its parts.

I wrote my new book, The Agile Brand, based on the idea that modern brands need a more fluid and two-way relationship with their customers. In order to do this, however, it requires that organizations adopt an agile mindset. 

Playing a piece of music well takes a lot of coordination, skill at playing the instruments involved and an underlying sense of rhythm to tie it all together. Richard Wagner, the famous conductor and composer, once said, “The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability always to indicate the right tempo.” While the conductor can’t play all the instruments in a symphony themselves, they are critical to making sure the right notes are played at the right time.

Let’s face it. There are just too many stimuli today, from the constant barrage of advertising on every device, medium and channel, to push notifications on your smartphone, to your flooding email inbox, and, well, you get the picture. Consumers with information overload need a way to make quick, informed decisions and choose the right product or service.

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is its ability to be used as a tool to allow us to do things better, faster and (in some cases) cheaper than other existing methods. This is a major reason why AI has made inroads in many industries, including marketing and advertising.

Brands are being continually forced to keep up with the latest trends in order to stay relevant and successful.

Successful brands have been using social media listening in order to stay ahead of their competition for years.

There are many tangible benefits of mapping your customer’s journey, including improved efficiency within your internal operations and better end results for sales. Increasingly, marketers are turning to automation, personalization and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the customer experience within that journey.

Chatbots are increasingly being used by companies to engage with their customers. In fact, it has been reported that 8 in 10 companies have already adopted them or are planning to do so by 2020. This points to fast growth in the market. In fact, 15% of consumers have interacted with a chatbot in the last 12 months, and this number will undoubtedly grow at a quick pace over the coming months.

You have undoubtedly heard a lot about GDPR lately. This probably involved a slew of emails in your inbox asking you to update your privacy settings, or (depending on the industry you work in), several other changes made to the way you do business.

Millennials are no strangers to debt. With student loan debt ($1.48 billion) at nearly double the total amount of credit card debt in the United States, a large portion student loan debt belongs to millennials. In fact, debt is such an overwhelming influence on millennial thoughts and behavior that a recent survey by Credible showed that debt scares them more than death.

Influencer marketing has become an extremely effective way to reach consumers because of the perceived authenticity that influencers have.

They’re seen as experts in their industry, so if they like a product, consumers will be more likely to buy it.

A great amount of time and investment is spent ensuring that consumers move through a sales funnel in the way that creates the desired outcome for marketers. What we know, however, is that consumers are not always likely to have a linear progression from the point of awareness to the point of sale.

Now that we are a few months into 2018, it gives us an interesting opportunity to both look back at the previous year and ahead to the rest of the year to see what trends are developing. As with any look forward, if you’ve been in the industry long enough, you’ll likely see the same trends appear every so often with new labels. Because, while technology continues to evolve, some aspects of marketing don’t change so quickly (or at all).

There is a single word you can throw in a sentence at your next meeting that will make people pay attention and feel like you’re taking a project in the right direction. Tell them that what you are suggesting is a “strategic” approach, and surely you will get plenty of head nods and agreement. Who wouldn't want to do something that is strategic?

We’ve been hearing about the benefits of personalization for years now. Consumers, bombarded with marketing and advertising from the moment they wake up to the moment they drift off staring at their smartphones, are demanding tailored experiences, products and offers from the brands they support.

Just as the Gen X and baby-boom generations have had their own unique relationship to brands, this dynamic will continue to evolve over time.

Digital marketers are always looking for tools to optimize their efforts. If you haven’t heard of Facebook Split Testing, don’t worry, but it might be the answer to some of your marketing optimization challenges.

Instagram has grown rapidly to become one of the most used social media apps in the world. The platform recently surpassed 700 million monthly users, putting it ahead of many of the most popular social networks, including Twitter. Now expanding into the paid social space, Instagram is fast becoming vital for brands to use in order to reach their target markets.