This political season has pried open a Pandora’s box of rancor, resentment and unrest. Across the ideological spectrum, people are defying institutions and incumbents in favor of outsiders promising to remake things from the ground up. People want something different.

Typically, when the public mood is this agitated it is because of upheaval or disruption, but that is not the case today. Nowadays, people are not worried about change. They are worried about no change. They are worried about stagnancy. People have lost confidence in the future. 

People are recoiling from, and in some cases revolting against, being trapped in a trajectory of decline from which they feel there is no escape. The only way people see to break out of this trajectory is to pursue a radical shift in course.

SEE ALSO:

Pundits have proposed many theories to explain the bitterly disgruntled public mood, and some of these explanations make good points. Cultures are in conflict, as are social classes, income groups, geographies and racial groups. Defiance, not allegiance, is the defining expression of the moment. But every one of these explanations is about how groups are at odds with one another, as if the underlying dynamic is only about one group versus another. While conflict is a big part of the current mood, this is just a manifestation of a deeper current. What is common to every group on every side of every debate is the fear of no change.

​For expert insight on marketing radical change, register for ���������’s 2016 Annual Conference, where you can hear GE CMO Linda Boff‘s keynote address,

On one side, there are people whose economic fortunes have deteriorated or who feel their social standing is threatened, while on the opposite side are people protesting inequality and what they see as a rigged system of systemic prejudice. For both sides, the worry is that the problems they see will persist unchanged. Both sides are concerned that the future means more of the same. One side believes the other’s solutions add to their downward trajectory.

Polls by every organization, including Gallup, CBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC and CNN, find a complete reversal of confidence in the future since the turn of the century. Over this period, robust optimism soured into forlorn pessimism. Gallup’s monthly tracking of the percentage of people satisfied with “the way things are going” is a straight line down from the late 1990s through the end of the recession. After a slight rebound, the percentage of people saying they are satisfied has settled into a trough two to three times lower than the highs a decade and a half ago.

People are not resigned to their fates, however. They are stirred up and determined to bend the arc of their trajectories in a more positive, hopeful direction. The annual Heartland Monitor Poll found in mid-2014 that 70% agreed the country needs “major changes,” with another 25% saying “minor changes” are needed. In other words, a vast majority of Americans—all ideologies, races, incomes and groups on every side of every debate—are calling for change. An April 2016 Public Policy Research Institute poll for The Atlantic found that 45% prefer a leader willing to “break the rules.” People want change, even radical change. No surprise, then, that this election cycle has been all about change.

READ MORE ABOUT POLITICAL MARKETING

• 
  
• ​

Expectations about brands have been affected as well. Brands must embrace change, too. Brands content to continue on course will feel stagnant to consumers and thus out of sync with the change people want. This requires a new way of doing business. Brands are immersed in change, but seek continuity. Change is valued as an input but not as an output. This approach to change is embedded in business-planning models in which the objective is to temper change and tamp it down.

Marketing is like a shock absorber for change, keeping the ride smooth no matter how tumultuous the road. Marketers want change in and continuity out, but people are now thinking differently about what they need. There is a new sensibility afoot. What looks to be turmoil that puts brands at risk is actually an uncommon opportunity for brands to forge fresh competitive advantage. People fear continuity. They fear no change. They want something different. Change is the imperative for brands.

The post The Only Thing Marketers Have to Fear Is Fear of Change appeared first on ���������.

InsightsCentral, Inc. recently spoke with Chris Grabarkiewicz, director of consumer insights & marketing analytics at North America, for her thoughts on overcoming this challenge.

Luxottica designs, manufactures and distributes fashion, luxury and sports eyewear. InsightsCentral develops the strategic skills of internal, corporate insights functions through the use of performance-enhancing methods to advance better business decisions.

SEE ALSO:

Q: What effect have you seen when data isn’t synthesized and integrated?

A: We all have been at meetings where data from different sources, such as survey results, social media and sales, was reported without any attempt to weave the information together. These types of presentations can leave decision makers feeling confused and unsure about making a decision. The result is often that every person attending the meeting takes away their own version of the story. Frequently, “gut instinct” rules the day.

Q: How did you and your insights team provide clarity to the glut of data and information?

A: Our transformation has focused on changing three key items:

1.    Replacing a traditional market mix modeling approach with a holistic business mix model.

2.    Linking brand tracking and consumers’ perceptions to business results.

3.    Linking creative development to business outcomes.

In the past, we used several different tools to help executives understand what mattered. Each of the tools delivered an answer, but the answers were disconnected and we weren’t sure to what degree different activities influenced each other. Additionally, there wasn’t belief from leadership or cross-functional teams about what data truly mattered.

We adopted a new business mix modeling approach. It included traditional marketing and media inputs, labor, training, weather data, consumer confidence measures, competitive activities and traditional consumer insights measures, such as brand equity tracking, copy testing and customer satisfaction.

SEE ALSO:

Q: What effect has this new modeling mix had?

A: We learned a great deal by integrating all of these sources of data, particularly which items were best at driving business and the ROI of each. The cross-functional nature of the analysis also allowed all of us to align on what drives the business. It has added significantly to our brand profit as our marketing placement and execution improved substantially.

The integrated analysis also helped the retail brands understand which brand equity and advertising metrics matter and how to move them. As a result, we work more efficiently. There is little debate about which metrics matter and everyone works off the same playbook.

The post The Cross-Functional Nature of Analysis Allows for Alignment appeared first on ���������.

Creating a great user experience is good marketing. Creating one people will share with friends is the Holy Grail of marketing. This is also the goal when working on an app’s user experience, says and former director of user experience (UX) at . 

“If your app is not remarkable, and people don’t talk about it and don’t market it for you, it’s extraordinarily hard to grow a user base,” . 

On average, , according to a 2015 report from Flurry Analytics. The found that approximately 90% of companies are increasing their investment in mobile apps in 2016.

But many companies are not getting enough value from the apps they create, according to a May 2016 report from Localytics, an analytics and marketing company. , a slight improvement from 25% in 2015. Even so, this means nearly one in four users are downloading an app, using it once and never opening it again.

Creating an app that isn’t used likely creates a poor impression, and also wastes money. Savvy Apps, a company that builds apps for businesses, notes in a blog post that building a single-platform app starts at $25,000. Building more complex, multi-platform apps may cost more than $1 million. 

Don’t miss Google VP  at the 2016 Annual Conference as he breaks down the five critical questions marketers must ask themselves to win in a mobile-first market.  now!

Lack of use could end up being a huge strain on a company’s budget. The Enterprise Mobility Exchange’s “The Global State of Enterprise Mobility: 2016” found that 29.1% of companies have a mobile solutions budget of $250,000 to $500,000 for the next 12 to 18 months. 

. The company, a member-based, car-sharing company, has an app with a four-star rating on and close to four stars on . 

“It guides users through the reservation process, locates nearby cars and contacts customer support,” the Mashable write-up says. “It even acts as a key fob by unlocking and locking doors and by honking the horn when you’re trying to find your .”

Carrie Allen, ZipCar’s director of member marketing, says the company focuses on user experience of the app by mingling the marketing and UX teams to ensure its members have a pain-free, easy-to-use experience. 

“Everything we do, both as a business as well as our technology, is really focused on what we hear from our members,” she says.

Here are six tips to combine marketing and UX effort to build an app customers love from the start. 

1) Test to Avoid a Poor Rating

Apps are almost immediately punished for a poor star rating on Apple and Google’s stores, Porter says. 

“If it’s one or two stars, then forget about it,” he says. “There has to be something else, a competitor’s app, they can download.”

The bar is high for apps, Porter says, and if a company releases one that isn’t smooth from the first day of release, they’ll be handicapped moving forward.

​SEE ALSO: 

​“You are essentially getting the people who are most interested to download it and use it. If they don’t have a great experience, they’re twice as shy coming back to it. You need to counteract that,” he says. “We spend a lot of time testing and going through beta periods with applications, using them ourselves—so-called ‘dogfooding’—so that we will know what percentage of people will get errors. It’s too big a risk not to know that going in.”

2) Ask Users What They Want

What better way to improve user experience than to go straight to the source? Allen says ZipCar’s members are very responsive regarding , updates and new features. 

“Not only [is it important] from a marketing perspective, but we want to make sure they understand how to use the service to the best of their ability,” she says. “When they go to use the service, we want to deliver on that promise we made with them.”

3) Think ���������t Onboarding from the Jump

Any regular app user knows the drill. After downloading an app, they’ll likely be asked to login, perhaps with an e-mail address or via Facebook. This is called onboarding, Porter says, and its execution should be the primary focus of an app’s creation.  

Many companies rely on the Facebook or social media login, Porter says. However, completely relying on Facebook will mean less consumer data; ideal for consumers, bad for companies. Organizations will still need to , such as e-mail, age and other information deemed important, on a screen after the Facebook login prompt.

“I spend lot of time preaching to our clients: If you can make that initial experience a first-order part of this process and build, that gets us so far and so fast,” he says. “You still need to make the core sequence of the app remarkable, and you need to make whatever the focus of your app is really smooth, but without that actual onboarding, you don’t have a chance.”

4) Make Data, Analytics and Metrics a Priority

At ZipCar, Allen says the marketing and UX teams work so closely together, they forget they’re two separate departments. Both marketing and UX have a they need to bring together to work toward the company’s goals. 

They’re mainly looking at whether members will promote ZipCar and its app. 

“It’s a variety of metrics around what features or capabilities they deem working the best,” she says. “We dive into their individual comments, as well as their overall score, to understand any pain points the member may be having and how we can resolve those.”

Porter says this measurement goes by different names, but is essentially measuring “” such as how often it’s shared, how many new users regular members bring in and other metrics to create a “digital referral trail.”  

For more on delivering invaluable insights to your organization, don’t miss Andy Lausch, senior director of analytics & insights for CDW​, at the 2016 Annual Conference..

5) Don’t Ignore What Competitors Have Done Correctly

“We’ll download every single competitor app and use it and really understand it, try to understand what makes it work,” Porter says. “We’ll come back to our client and say, ‘Listen, these guys have this total sequence nailed. We’re going to learn from them. We’re going to borrow these four things from them and emulate these four screens.’ ”

“Borrowing” proven ideas—but never copying pixel-for-pixel—helps companies emulate what works well in other apps. Some ideas are so great and so obvious that they deserve repeating, Porter says. 

“Nothing is really new under the sun, so when a client comes to us and says, ‘We want to completely reimagine X,’ we know that the solution is not going to be a complete reimagining,” Porter says. “It’s going to be understanding what really works, understanding how this company is hopefully slightly better positioned in taking advantage of that.”

​SEE ALSO: 

6) Keep it Simple

ZipCar’s solution to avoid complexity is to have simplicity as a core company value, Allen says. “We really believe that if we can keep the experience in the app, the service and our marketing approach simple, the member or prospect will be able to interact with the service as it fits them,” she says. “That’s one of the most important pieces from a technology standpoint as well as a marketing standpoint.”

Apps that aren’t simple may end up among the 23% that are downloaded and never again used, leaving a proverbial bad taste in the user’s mouth. Not good for user experience; even worse for marketing. 

“If you get lost in the app, then we haven’t done our job,” Allen says. “We want to keep it simple for you.”

The post How to Create an App Customers Will Use appeared first on ���������.

The ���������’s first intellectual agenda is meant to serve as a source of guidance and inspiration for marketing professionals as well as academics. In it, we lay out the “seven big problems” marketers face in the boardroom and in the marketplace. These problems are a large part of that intellectual agenda, and will help us hone in on how we inform and inspire you, the marketing community. 

Here, we dive into the questions that stem from each of the seven problems. ��������� thought leaders discuss the “what” and “why” of each pillar problem, while we leave the door open indefinitely on the “how.” After all, marketing is about rolling with the punches.

For every big problem, there are a million small solutions. What are yours? Take the  to understand how your firm is doing.  

Carrie Edwards

President at WHITE64

Staying close to your customers and understanding the external cultural factors that shape their thoughts and influence what they do can dramatically increase your competitive advantage. Technology enables insights of all kinds, so you must prioritize who you should track, what you want to know and why it offers the most value. Use technology to understand how prospects and customers navigate through the funnel to purchase, share and recommend your product. This will provide insight and intelligence on how consumer wants and needs may change over time and affect consumption.

Diane Hayes

President and Cofounder of InCrowd Inc. 

We have to stop thinking about getting insights as market research projects, but rather build continuous dialogue with our key stakeholders. Recognize, engage and track those who most affect your brand. There’s still too much friction in the process of obtaining needed information. New technologies such as mobile, social, automation and analytics, make this imminently possible. They let us have the direct relationships with target constituencies and provide engagement that these communities often crave, and dramatically streamline time to insights so that needed information can drive important decisions at the speed of business today.

Jen Drolet

CEO at iModerate Research Technologies

To effectively employ insights to fuel progress, companies should start simple and refute the perceived rigidity that accompanies obtaining customer feedback. Seek to generate feedback through a mix of listening, asking and observing both your customers and your competition’s customers. Work to regularly share relevant and substantive feedback across the organization to fuel demand—bite-sized nuggets can be impactful. Recognize the staggering number of requests consumers receive for feedback. Put a higher value on their time by sharing how their thoughts can meaningfully improve their experiences. General Mills did this brilliantly by crediting moms with their changes to Cheerios’ ingredients.  

Rebecca Brooks

Founder of Alter Agents

Insights can often fail to resonate within an organization because we speak to our customers from our own perspective. “Did you see my advertising? Will you buy my product in the future? Tell me about myself.” These questions bear no resemblance to how our customers are actually experiencing our brand and making decisions about what to buy. Customers experience a brand as a series of discrete moments and make their purchase decisions based on the specific context of that time. For insights to drive action, they must accurately reflect the customer’s experience and not mirror our internal concerns.

David Krajicek

Chief Commercial Officer at GfK Consumer Experiences 

I have been concerned for a while about what I call the tyranny of the dashboard. The proliferation of data has many companies focused on the curation of knowledge and undervaluing the generation of insight. An “insight” that does not answer an important business question is really just a data point. An insight has to have a clear call to action, directing rather than just observing. It needs to be timely: “I told you so” has no value. And it should be digestible: plainly stated, concise and smart. Finally, in my view, you cannot create and activate an insight unless your entire organization understands the broad marketplace and your firm’s strategic priorities. Too many companies fail to activate important insights because of an uneven understanding of the competitive market and unclear business priorities.

Craig A. Overpeck

COO of Global Research at M3 USA 

Pharmaceutical marketers are in an ever-transforming environment where the decision-maker landscape is rapidly evolving to include multiple stakeholders: practitioners, payers, pharmacists, patients, corporations and governments. Effective marketing requires that life science companies and their agencies uncover each stakeholder’s decision process. New incentive models in healthcare, and narrowing access to prescribers, challenge the traditional pharma marketer to now measure all aspects of the treatment-decision journey. Understanding these new roles in today’s healthcare system is crucial before setting the message, channel, cadence and the target. All of this is further complicated by an age wave of physicians retiring and new practitioners entering the mix. Recognizing the changing faces of the stakeholders is the key to unlocking better customer insights, which creates better marketing. 

Pierre Le Manh

CEO, North America at Ipsos

Finding that 1% killer insight is the goal, yet it is getting harder as we have access to more data sets. Having troves of data is of little value unless someone can make good sense of it all. Then, curiously, after all the effort that goes into finding the 1%, it is rarely shared. Something that is very precious is often not available to most people in the organization.

The perfect insight machine marries engaging technology and talented people. It’s about creating empathy, stimulating creation and activating that 1% while immersed in the consumer’s world. 

The post Seven Experts on Marketing Problem Four: Generating and Using Insight to Shape Marketing Practice appeared first on ���������.

Celebrities are subjected to a lot of scrutiny over what they wear.

It only seems right that some would want to construct their own outfits. Much like the entertainment industry itself, celebrity fashion is rife with redux, done over and over again. 

Granted, image licensing is a natural extension of being well-known. It might be harder to find half a dozen famous people who haven’t endorsed anything than lose a round of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” But clothing lines stand alone among product categories as magnets of celebrity investment.

“Fashion is where most celebrities have found their home,” says , chairman of brand licensing agency .

Since the 1950s, celebrities have lent their names to wearable brands in the hopes of fomenting desirability among key consumer segments. Just this year, fashion labels have been launched by pop music star Zayn Malik and actress Eva Longoria while clothing lines for existing companies have been created by Courtney Love, Liv Tyler and Antonio Banderas (who is currently pursuing a fashion degree in a bid to become a serious designer).  

Some of these brands are extremely successful. Like, discovering-an-oil-well successful. , for instance, is widely reported to pull in $1 billion in annual revenue. Jay Z’s line, , has topped $700 million. 

It’s easy to see why celebrity brands have a leg up on competitors. Bringing a celebrity on board is the mother of all marketing shortcuts.

“Celebrity brands enter the market with instant awareness,” says , global marketing director at brand consulting agency . “They’re usually thousands, if not millions of people, possibly globally, who know who the celebrity is. That’s something really unusual for a new brand. A new brand works really hard to gain awareness.”

By leveraging the notoriety and goodwill accumulated by luminaries of the stage, screen and sports world, brands can reach the masses in a fraction of the time needed to build a traditional brand, freeing marketers to concentrate on making the brand a winner.

“If you and I decided we were going to go into business, it would take a lot of money and a lot of time to build a brand. You find the right celebrity and you put their name on it and show it to their social media following and on TV, you can get it out there much quicker,” says , managing partner at global business development and strategy consulting firm 

Yet it’s foolish to assume all threads backed by celebrities are spun into gold. The fashion world is notoriously cutthroat, and its recent past is littered with cautionary tales of doomed celebrity bids for sartorial success.

​“Let’s not kid ourselves. There are more failed celebrity licenses out there than there are successes,” Stone says. 

But properly crafted celebrity clothing companies can become reliable moneymakers for all parties in the manufacturing and distribution chain. In some instances, legacies are secured by the products rather than the names attached.

Getting there isn’t easy. It takes the right celebrity matched to the right designs and sold through the right channels.

Celebrity clothing lines are born two ways in about equal frequency, according to both Ross and Stone. They develop either by a celebrity looking to try her hand at running a clothing company, or by an existing company seeking to recruit a famous name as a spokesmodel for its brand. Both create successes and misfires.

Quality Matters 

One drawback to a celebrity clothing brand is the concern about quality relative to “real” designers. Personage-produced apparel needs to meet suitable quality thresholds to achieve some measure of staying power.

“There are a lot of celebrities and their management teams who feel that the celebrity’s name can sell anything. That isn’t the case. If you put any celebrity’s name on the label and then you cover it up, and you have no idea who it is, will the consumer buy that? That’s really critical,” Ross says.

“A celebrity’s name will inspire a consumer to buy the product once,” says Stone, “but if it falls apart in the washing machine, [consumers] are not buying it a second time. It’s that second purchase, and that third and that fourth and that fifth, that you need and you want.”

Among Beanstalk’s many successes was the fashion label for then-child actors Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. As Stone recounts, the idea came about when they realized there were no mass-market clothing lines aimed exclusively at tween girls. 

“The girls were 12 at the time. We met their representatives. They were extremely popular with the tween girl demographic,” he says. “Every little girl in that 6 to 12 age group was worshipping Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. It was quite amazing. If you were the parents of boys, you were totally unaware of it.”

Stone says a top-notch creative team surrounding the Olsen twins made them remarkably fashionable and provided creditability for the line. When they launched their Mary-Kate and Ashley brand in seven categories (sportswear, swimwear, sleepwear, eyewear, footwear, bags, jewelry and accessories) at Walmart in January 2001, it was an instant success. By the end the year, it was estimated to account for one-third of their personal revenue of $500 million for the year. 

Despite being middle schoolers, the pair were intimately involved in the selection of products, with The New York Times calling their powers over creative direction “despotic.” They pushed Walmart to offer pants that stop an inch below the navel for girls between the ages of 4 and 14.  

Their massive success enabled the twins to launch three additional lines after they grew of the tween girl market, which was invaded by successive waves of imitators such as Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus.

Fashion Icons 

Along with quality is the need for authenticity. Consumers need to be able to picture the famous personality wearing the garments. Ross describes authenticity by pointing to a recently inked deal involving global soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and blanket distributor Elite Team. The heavy sports blankets are designed to be used at sporting events as a way to keep warm or as cushioning for the ground. “What kid doesn’t know or want to be Cristiano Ronaldo? This is something that is truly, truly authentic to who he is and who his fan base is,” Ross says.

The Right Fit 

The third pillar of enduring celebrity brands is finding the channel. Along with product quality and authenticity, identifying the right distributor is key to the long-term success of the brand. Celebrity-branded merchandise needs to be available where a target audience will shop for it.

Retailer mismatch is arguably what tripped up Sarah Jessica Parker’s first bid for a clothing company. She teamed up with now-defunct retailer Steve & Barry’s to offer a line of dresses under the label BITTEN starting at $8.98. Parker has blamed the failure of the line on the economic crisis of 2008, but that doesn’t jibe with the general consensus. Parker’s character on Sex and the City exuded sophisticated style and expensive taste. At Steve & Barry’s, BITTEN was being hawked alongside products from actress Amanda Bynes and Chinese basketball star Stephon Marbury. Carrie Bradshaw, this brand was not. 

“One of the factors was that it just didn’t really gel with [what] people perceived Sarah Jessica Parker’s brand to be. They didn’t associate [her] with affordable, practical stuff,” Wade says. “Just last year, she launched a new shoe line, SJP Collections. It’s much more high-end, and much more unique, and much more along the lines of what Sarah Jessica Parker is known for. I would expect it to do better.”

The imbalance can work the other way as well, Stone says. “Some celebrities might come to me and say, ‘I want to do a clothing line for teenage boys. I shop at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, so that’s where I want to sell it,’” Stone says. “That’s not where teenage boys buy their clothes. Teenage boys buy their clothes either at the specialty stores like Abercrombie & Fitch, or they buy their clothes at Walmart and Target. And the celebrity would say, ‘I would never want my name at Walmart.’ Well then, nice meeting you.”

An example of a good fit between celebrity and retailer is Lauren Conrad and Kohl’s, who have similarly aligned demographics.  

“When we did the deal at Kohl’s, Lauren was maybe 24 years old, so her fan base was 15 to 25. Maybe a little bit older,” Ross says. “It hit about 27% of the Kohl’s demographic.”

Getting all of this right takes a lot of oversight from the celebrity; lines can falter if their chief brand ambassadors aren’t up to the task. Negotiations need to be hashed out before any deal can be finalized. They need to be able to commit to a certain amount of appearances and social media promotion per year for it to be successful. And they need to be involved behind the scenes, as well. 

“The celebrity has to understand that this is a lot of work,” Stone says. “Celebrities have to be involved in the design process. They don’t have to be designers, but they have to know what they like. … They have to have some design direction that they can give to a licensee. Then they have to be prepared to look at every single product as it’s being developed. And in fashion, that’s a lot. Fashion is at least four seasons a year and there are multiple products in each season.” 

Before he negotiated the deal between Lauren Conrad and Kohl’s, Ross made it a point to visit with Conrad and suss out her level of engagement.

“The first time I met Lauren, I walked into a sample room, and she was on her knees pinning garments,” he says. “That’s authentic. She knew what she was doing.”

Fashion Flops 

And even if all that is done correctly, there is still a chance the brand will fail. One driver of the flops is public perception of the celebrity. Athletes lose endorsement deals all the time for questionable behavior, and entertainers are no different.

“Some of the clear misses come when the celebrity really has lost favor in the public eye or gotten in trouble for drug use, or had other encounters with the law, or just is known as a rotten person … and loses favor, because then people don’t aspire to be like them, and they don’t want to be associated with them,” Wade says. 

So how much do celebrities stand to gain from a successful clothing line? Not as much as you’d think, according to Stone. If a celebrity can be quantified as a billion-dollar brand, that means a billion dollars of product is being sold at retail. A billion retail dollars may translate to $500 million of wholesale sales. If the celebrity gets 7% royalty, she’s getting 7% of $500 million, which is $35 million. “A billion dollars in sales is going to generate anywhere from $25 million to $50 million in royalties for a celebrity. And that’s a billion-dollar brand. That’s hitting the lotto. That’s a wildly successful brand,” says Stone.

The implication is that many brands will never see Jessica Simpson Collection-level revenue. Some may even be money losers for the celebrity. Earlier this year, Kanye West tweeted that he was $53 million in personal debt, with the bulk coming from heavy losses suffered in the wake of two major pushes into the fashion world falling flat. But celebrity clothing lines done properly can provide the big name behind the brand with a comfortable income for years to come, even if they are retired from their original source of fame.  

“If you do it right, this money is coming in every single year. It can be an annuity of sorts. [Former Charlie Angel’s star] Jaclyn Smith has been collecting royalties now for 25 years,” says Stone. “Most people who are buying the Jaclyn Smith brand at Kmart today don’t know that she was a television star. That’s really what you want. She has become a fashion brand. She is no longer a celebrity license. Her celebrity license has morphed into a full-fledged fashion brand.”

Fashion Fauxpas 

For every success story in the world of celebrity fashion, there are celebrity-backed brands that went belly-up. It’s a list that includes some big names, as well as luminaries whose time in the spotlight was a bit more fleeting.

Mandy Moore 

In 2005, Moore launched Mblem, a line of contemporary knitwear and cashmere aimed at taller women. For a while, it seemed like Moore was doing it right by frequently wearing her line in public. However, when it shut down in 2009 amid a decline in sales, a “humbled” Moore told the press that the apparel was not a true reflection of her ideas.

LL Cool J

The right distribution channel is a key part of achieving lasting success as a celebrity fashion brand. Sears invested heavily in the line in 2008 to boost its standing among multicultural shoppers, only to pull the plug seven months later in April 2009.

Chris Kirkpatrick

It’s important for the celebrity endorsing a fashion line to be considered fashionable. This erstwhile NSYNC member tried his hand at a collection at the height of his fame under the label FuMan Skeeto. Described as casual and athletic-based clothing for both men and women, the unique designs were sold through Nordstrom, Bloomingdales and Von Maur in the U.S. and Eaton’s in Canada. The line shut down in 2002, the same year NSYNC called it quits and the bombastic threads were no longer considered stylish. 

David Hasslehoff   

The actor and musician launched a line of “super cool, laid-back surfing gear” in 2006 under the brand Malibu Dave. Hasslehoff was reportedly inspired by the popularity of a shirt featuring his likeness and bearing the tagline “Don’t Hassle the Hoff,” and told media outlets at the time he felt comparable to Elvis in star power.  It was over by the end of the year.

OutKast

Celebrity clothing experts stress the need for brands to be seen as an authentic extension of the stars themselves, and advise each A-lister attached to a label to personally inspect each garment for approval. The failed line from hip-hop megastars OutKast is a great example why. Band member Andre 3000 was quoted in the press saying that neither he nor his partner, Big Boi, would ever wear any of the designs.

Lindsay Lohan 

Landing big-name celebrities to lend their image to a fashion collection can provide an incredible boost to brands—unless that celebrity happens to be perceived negatively. It’s no secret that Lindsay Lohan’s public image has taken a big hit, starting right around the time she launched her 6126 line in 2008 and escalating until it collapsed in 2011. Lohan and her former clothing manufacturer, D.N.A.M., ended up suing each other, with the company claiming its once-well-received brand was dragged down by Lohan’s high-profile personal issues. 

The post What It Takes to Market a Celebrity Brand appeared first on ���������.

Middle market firms may be small in number, but they pack a big wallop when it comes to their economic impact. That’s the takeaway from the June 2016 edition of the , a collaborative report by American Express and B-to-B data and services firm Dun & Bradstreet that details the makeup and output of the sandwiched sector of U.S. companies.

Now in its fifth edition, the most recent report was released in June. It looks at what middle market businesses—those with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion—contributed to the U.S. economy as a whole between 2011 and 2016 and how they measured up against larger and smaller rivals.

The report found that middle market firms, despite only accounting for 1% of all commercially active organizations in the country, are responsible for one-quarter of all private sector revenues and employ 25% of all private sector workers.

“The state of the middle market right now is very strong,” says Julie Weeks, research advisor to American Express. “There’s been a near doubling in the number of firms in the middle market—87% growth between 2011 and 2016—and there has been a doubling in their revenue and collective employment.” 

“And,” she says, “they’re growing way faster than anybody else in the economy.”

According to the index, the number of U.S. middle market firms grew 36% in 15 months, from approximately 136,000 in December 2014 to more than 182,000 as of March 2016. During the same time period, the total number of commercially active firms actually declined by 17%.

“It’s probably been the case that they have outpaced average growth for years and years. It’s a trend that we’re more recently becoming aware of, but I’m not sure it’s new,” Weeks says. “This has been the sweet spot for entrepreneurial dynamism for a long time, and we’re just now realizing that this is a part of the economy that has a name and we’re starting to look at it a little more.”

While the survey does not measure the fluidity of the middle market—how many businesses have revenue changes that bring them in or out of the $1 million to $10 billion range—Weeks believes some of the growth can be attributed to previously small firms achieving middle market status. She points to longitudinal data suggesting it takes new businesses an average of a decade or more to obtain middle market status.

Interestingly, previous versions of the Power Index found that middle market firms were more adversely affected by the recession and subsequent sluggish recovery than their larger and smaller counterparts. That middle market firms are now, as a whole, doing better than other classes suggests that the middle market may be more responsive to fluctuations in the national economy than other companies. 

“I think that’s certainly the case,” Weeks says. “It looked from that first report that they weren’t bouncing back as much in terms of revenue growth, but they were making a more concerted effort to keep jobs.”

On top of evaluating the overall middle market performance, the report also examines the middle market at a more granular level in order to provide a snapshot of its components. It shows, for instance, that middle market firms are disproportionately made up of manufacturing, wholesale trade and educational services industries, compared to the overall economy. They are also concentrated largely in the Great Lakes region with Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois all making the top 10 states with the greatest number of middle market firms. Those first three states, plus Texas, also report seeing their total number of middle market businesses double over the length of the survey.

READ MORE ABOUT THE MIDDLE MARKET

The survey found that middle market enterprises are more likely to be minority-owned than the general commercial landscape, but they are less likely to be owed by women. The rate at which middle market businesses are led by women, however, is roughly equivalent to commercial active firms as a whole.

“Part of that might have to do with incentives in state and federal governments with public sector procurement,” Weeks says. “There are programs in the federal government, the 8(a) Program in particular, which helps minority-owned firms open a door to government procurement, which really is a gateway to larger growth. There are more and more women and minorities who have higher levels of education and higher work experience, managerial experience, so they’re starting businesses now, compared to a generation ago.”

Unlike other surveys that report on the middle market, the Middle Market Power Index uses data culled from Dun & Bradstreet’s proprietary database, which Weeks likens to a census of all commercially active firms in the economy. Every business that receives a U.S. government grant or contract work must acquire a data-universal number system (D-U-N-S) ID from Dun & Bradstreet, and the company stores financial data for more than 250 million businesses worldwide. 

This allows the Middle Market Power Index to measure and extrapolate from statistical info reported by companies inside and out of the middle market, instead of soliciting self-reported survey responses from a random group of middle market executives.  

“There’s a lot of value in asking people questions, which is some of the middle market executive reporting data, but that’s fairly small in number. It’s one or two thousand people [total]. You can monitor changes over time and whether there’s optimism or pessimism, so there’s a value there,” Weeks says. “What we bring to the table is a lot broader and richer. We’re able to look in a broader time scale and can bring more detailed nuances like looking at state-level information and industry-level information, as opposed to talking about the middle market period without that subgroup analysis.”

Weeks says she hopes the Middle Market Power Index catches the eye of investors and policymakers who might otherwise overlook this group of enterprises in favor of chasing after the biggest firms and the largest workforces. She suggests this survey hints at an equal, if not greater, return awaiting canny resource brokers who turn an eye toward middle market organizations. 

“One of the biggest things to take away from this is that this relatively small part of the business population is the source of a lot of what we are taking for granted: job growth and revenue growth,” Weeks says. “The big takeaway is: Pay attention to this small-but-mighty sector of the economy.”

The post The Other One Percent: Middle Market Firms Fueling the Economy appeared first on ���������.