If so, congratulations! It’s obviously made an indelible impression on those who have come into contact it. Who knows, one day it might even end up in the Museum of Brands in London – an institution dedicated to showcasing the evolution of branding, advertising and packaging design from the time of Queen Victoria to the present day.

So don’t worry, the 12,000 or so objects on display don’t just pander to lovers of nostalgia, they also reflect current fads and fashions. A brand that never seems to lose its lustre is the British Royal Family. In conjunction with the recent wedding of Kate and William, the museum is exhibiting souvenirs from past royal weddings – including commemorative crockery, teabags, clothing and much more (ends August 31). The permanent exhibition is open year round.

Parker is striving to grow quickly within the product area of pneumatics. In only a short time, they have come into contact with hundreds of potential customers. The secret? A focused investment in search engine advertising and a new website exclusively devoted to pneumatics.

Search engine advertising (AdWords) has effectively helped direct more visitors to Parker’s Pneumatic website. Once there, as many as 8 out of 10 stay (5 out of 10 is usually regarded as a good result). The contents and design of the website are intended to encourage visitors to find out more and facilitate selling thanks to better informed customers.
These digital tools are key elements in a more comprehensive campaign that Sandberg Trygg has developed for Parker Pneumatics. After a successful start, more of the campaign will be rolled out in early Spring.

Technology-driven companies often find it hard to get used to the idea that customers’ subjective perceptions and feelings actually contribute to creating value. They suppose that value resides exclusively in a product’s design, performance, reliability and durability.

Well, they suppose wrong. Your company’s reputation, its brand value, affects the amount you can sell and the prices you can charge. Customers would rather buy from a company they know than from one they don’t know. And they’ll also pay more – from 1-2% for standardized components to around 25% for complex systems. And this goes for products with roughly the same technical functions.

How can this be? Well, customers put a measurable cash value on a brand because it’s impossible for them to acquire total information. And the more complicated a product and its service component, the more its potential buyers must base their decision on faith rather than knowledge. Even if all conceivable information were available, it would be too costly to thoroughly evaluate the product. Buyers must always base their choice to some extent on the credibility of the supplier. The brand, corporate image and quite simply how well known the suppliers are therefore greatly influence choice.

This is just one of the many insights you can find in “22 Steps to Optimizing your International Marketing Communications”. It has been written by Bengt Anderson who previously worked at Sandberg Trygg and is a specialist in international B2B marketing. If you would like to order the publication, please click here.

The challenge of the core values was to create interest. It’s all too easy to make core values abstract concepts far removed from everyday life at work. A day in an international company like Nynas varies greatly depending on the job you have and where you work.

Together with Nynas we agreed that:

• Expressing the core values is at least as important as the core values themselves.
• Good examples from co-workers’ everyday life will demonstrate the core values. Co-workers who live the values are hailed as “heroes”, not some document with a list of abstractions.
• The managers will get tools to help them be good ambassadors.

Our campaign has two levels: first to awaken co-worker awareness and then make sure they are inspired by the core values. It is partly about personal communication and support for the managers and partly about strengthening “mechanical” communication. The campaign stretches over two years.

This autumn almost 300,000 students will begin at one of Sweden’s universities or colleges. So far their main concerns are probably about finding somewhere to live and passing exams. But soon their thoughts will turn to their future dream career and employer.

The German company Trendence Institute has tracked employer preferences of Swedish students. In 2009, Ericsson was top of the list, closely followed by Sony Ericsson, IKEA, Google and Skanska. No big surprise – they are large, well-known established companies with a good international reputation. But they are also companies that are good at ”employer branding”, that is brand-building for potential and existing co-workers. They are highly visible in the media and often participate in fairs and exhibitions and hold lectures.

We are living in a time when the competition for talent is getting tougher. Attracting, recruiting and motivating the right person is crucial for future success. You need skilful, ambitious students on your side. The earlier you start communicating with them, the better.

Perhaps your company does not have the same resources for employer branding as the top 5 mentioned above. But that’s OK. Even small activities can make a difference. Here are some tips.

• Guest lectures. Contact some universities or colleges that teach subjects close to your areas of competence. Make a professional digital presentation. Make sure you have something to leave behind, for example a brochure, a USB memory stick or something similar. For several years Sandberg Trygg has lectured to students of International Economics at Chalmers. Thanks to this we receive a number of qualified applications every year.
• Review your job ads. Too many ads include a company description that would be more appropriate for an annual report than for attracting potential co-workers. For example. Nothing wrong with hard facts, but don’t forget the soft facts.
• Be active on the net. Many websites include a section called “Vacancies”, but it’s often slim pickings there. Make sure that those who are interested in your company can send in an application right there and then. Highlight the different professions in your company with co-worker interviews, for example.
• Don’t forget social media. It doesn’t have to be so special. A Facebook group for students in a certain target group is easy to get going. Just make sure you have the resources to conduct a good dialogue.

The German group Kraftwerk was formed in 1968 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. During the first few years they mainly did instrumental, experimental music but then they gradually moved over to electronic pop music. They often had to develop the instruments themselves to get the sound they were looking for.

The big breakthrough came in 1975 with their album Autobahn. In the following years the group released a number of successful albums: Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man Machine (1978) and Computerworld (1981). But then something interesting happened. The next record, Electric Café, was first released in 1986, The Mix came in 1991 and after that nothing until Tour de France in 2003. Despite this, the group has steadily grown in popularity. How is this possible?

As early as in the 70s and 80s Hütter talked about Kraftwerk as a concept where the band members were regarded as music workers. The members were often replaced by robots, for example, in photos and concerts. The band never mentions a word about their private life and don’t even talk much about their music. Their studio in Düsseldorf has no phone, the only way to contact Kraftwerk is to go to the studio and ring the doorbell. And hope they open the door.

The combination of concept thinking and mystery has created an aura round Kraftwerk, which makes the band’s music more important than what the individual members think and what sort of lives they live. A visit from MTV Cribs would be unthinkable. In many ways, Kraftwerk is like a company. The management hammer out the values and message, which is then communicated consistently. The strength of the brand grows and the company becomes more and more successful.

What co-workers, or band members achieve is, of course, important. But most important is that the big picture, the brand, is greater than the individual parts. A member of Kraftwerk between 1974-1989, Wolfgang Flür, even published an autobiography called “I was a robot”.

What Kraftwerk can teach us about successful brand building is the importance of consistency, persistence and the ability to differentiate oneself from the competition. Curious to find out more about Kraftwerk? Read Kraftwerk – Man, Machine and Music by Pascal Bussy. ISBN 0-946719-70-5.

Core values often only get so far as an internal document. But not at Modul-System, one of Europe’s leading manufacturer of racking systems for light service vehicles. A while ago they asked us to help them highlight their core values. It all ended with us turning these values into a film.

The film has several levels. On the surface you are taken on a journey that reveals each core value. But then you can always click to dig deeper into the details. The film will be used in several contexts, such as at trade fairs, on sales visits, as an introduction to new employees and, of course, on the web.

But enough talk – click on the window and enjoy the film.

Anyone who’s walked past a building site in Stockholm has seen them. Bright orange and usually filled with rubble, they’re everywhere. Heck, even I’ve seen them, and I’m pretty good at filtering out anything to do with hard physical labour. That said, I take my hat off to Big Bag. As far as I’m concerned, these bags are sheer marketing wizardry.

I can think of few other products that also double as well crafted adverts. All the information you need to place your order – should you suddenly feel an urge to own a huge orange bag – is there: product name (simple, alliterative and descriptive), web address and phone number. But what lifts Big Bag to genius level is that the company’s customers actually pay for the advertising space. Think about it, every time somebody buys and uses a Big Bag, thousands of people get the message. You can’t beat that for a savvy media strategy! I’ll probably never buy one, but I’m still a Big Fan.

Advertising is a constant battle for attention. In spite of that, the majority of ads only engage one of our senses – sight. Hearing is equally powerful, but is not equally exploited as a ”means of persuasion”.

But, you probably say, we are surrounded by sounds from commercials. Anyone can testify to an endless stream of jingles and songs that get under our skin making us either happy or really annoyed.  And sure that’s true. But the kind of sounds that most effectively trigger emotions and make us prone to buy, are everyday natural sounds – and they are not as common in advertising.

Which sounds create the strongest emotional responses has been examined by Martin Lindstrom, marketing consultant and author of the bestseller Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy. To get an uncensored image of our emotional responses he has used an MRI to monitor the brain activity of people listening to various sounds. Not what we think we feel but how we actually feel.  And in terms of creating positive feelings one sound stands out, the sound of a happy baby. So, if you want to sell, do it to the soundtrack of a baby giggling.

That particular sound might not be very useful in all communication. But there are definitely other sounds that can enhance the positive experience of your products and services. Just think primitive responses; feelings and associations that are hardwired in your brain. Sounds that your body already knows the meaning of.  An image of a cold beer accompanied by the sound of pouring liquid makes you more prone to buy than the same beer image with music. And more car buffs get chills down their spine when they see a sports car and hear the perfect purring of an engine, than when they see the same car to the sound of rollicking rock’n’roll.

Sophisticated brain scanning and other medical imaging technologies teach us more about what works in advertising, but so far we’re only at the beginning of what is called neural marketing. And anyone who wants to explore the soundscape has plenty of virgin territory to cover.  Not to mention the possibilities of brand building with our remaining senses: touch, smell and taste.

Natural life is cyclical. Just as spring gives way to summer and night to day, human behaviour follows recurring patterns. I’ve long believed that when a certain type of conduct has become sufficiently pervasive for our collective consciousness to accept it as the norm, it has probably reached the top of its cycle and is about to head into retreat. The challenge is to identify these cyclical peaks as they occur.

I’m going to stick my neck out, and point to one that is long overdue for a downward trajectory: the brazen dishonesty of our elected leaders – regardless of their affiliations. We readily recall Bill Clinton’s many peccadilloes, all of which he vehemently denied despite the overwhelming evidence against him. Or his successor’s determination to rid the world of a tyrant’s weapons of mass of destruction, when it turned out those weapons were, in fact, ‘discovered’ for the sole purpose of manufacturing consent. Does this mendacity lead to public disgrace, immediate resignation or impeachment? Heck no, we shrug and accept it as the norm. But if my instincts are correct, perhaps we won’t for much longer.

What, you may wonder, has this got to do with communication? A lot, as it happens. In a world where ‘spin’ and dissembling are commonplace, honesty, integrity and respect for the audience stand out like roses in a thicket of brambles. As legendary adman Bill Bernbach once put it, “I’ve a discovered a great new gimmick – just tell the truth.”