In the past decade, the web has matured as a critical touchpoint for brands. Online has continued to grow, audiences have matured, and the tools available to make the web more useful, interactive, and experiential have proliferated. Yet, despite advances in technology and demographics, the optimal online experience is often challenging and elusive for leading brands to accomplish.

Earlier this year, Siegel+Gale launched an initiative to study the best practices and common challenges of some of the web’s most innovative purveyors. We interviewed senior executives in four distinct industry segments: media and entertainment, information services, financial services, and sports. While we discovered nuances specific to each segment, all respondents sounded a common concern: how do you manage and measure the sometimes obscure, always alluring benefit of online experience?

Continue reading this post.

The quest for cost-cutting overrides common sense. When the phone company wants to take the customer service phone number off the bill because “It encourages people to call,” you know that efficiency and cost-cutting have gone too far.

Have corporate executives lost their minds? Now there is technology that monitors the tone of your voice as you respond to telephone prompts, and when it detects increased irritation it offers you a live person. If you are so certain that you are causing irritation, remove the irritant. Don’t wait until I’m ready to strangle myself with the phone cord.

Continue reading this post.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Davia Temin, Christine Summerson or Trang Mar
Temin and Company -212-588-8788

Visionaries! 2008 Award Presented at MAD’s Annual Gala
Tonight, Wednesday, November 12, 2008

NEW YORK, NY—November 12, 2008—Tonight, Alan Siegel, Founder and Chairman of pioneering strategic brand consultancy Siegel+Gale, will receive the Museum of Arts and Design Visionaries! 2008 Award honoring outstanding individuals in the arts and industry. The Award will be presented this evening at the Museum’s annual benefit gala in New York.

“Over the past three decades, Alan Siegel has become one of the best-known figures in the branding business. He has achieved the stature of both pillar of the establishment and provocative iconoclast while building Siegel+Gale, a leading brand consultancy devoted to positioning global companies for competitive success,” says the Museum as reason for the Award.

“The Museum has played an important role in my life,” says Mr. Siegel. “It has been a privilege to have helped champion the new building campaign and expansion efforts. This is a milestone year for the Museum and a crowning moment in which to be honored.”

Mr. Siegel has a decade-long history of involvement with the Museum as a trustee, patron, and Chair of the Marketing Committee. In the past five years, he has worked to support the Museum’s capital campaign for its new facility as well as leading the efforts to reposition its international presence through innovative communication and marketing materials.

MAD Visionaries! Awards are presented each year to individuals whose achievements reflect the Museum’s mission to foster an enthusiastic appreciation of contemporary craft, decorative arts, and design, and their relations to fashion, architecture, interior design, and technology.

The Museum of Arts and Design opened its new facility, the Jerome and Simona Chazen Building, at 2 Columbus Circle in New York in September, 2008. The Museum is the country’s leading cultural institution dedicated to the collection and exhibition of contemporary objects created in a wide range of media, including clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber.

The Museum expects to exceed 400,000 visitors in its first year. “Online access to its permanent collection, teacher training institute, and a virtual library of techniques will increase that number exponentially,” says Mr. Siegel.

About Alan Siegel

A pioneer of the branding industry and founder of brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale, Alan Siegel is also a well-known photographer (One Man’s Eye: Photographs from the Alan Siegel Collection, Harry N. Abrams), and author (The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Markets, Lightbulb Press). As consultant, teacher, and commentator, Mr. Siegel’s influence extends to creating strategic branding programs for organizations such as 3M, American Express, AARP, the National Basketball Association (NBA), Caterpillar, The Girl Scouts, The New School, and CBS. He also serves on the boards of numerous business and cultural organizations, including the Museum of Arts and Design, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Design Management Institute, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Girls Inc., the Authors Guild Foundation, and the American Theater Wing, where he is a TONY Awards voter.

About Siegel+Gale

Siegel+Gale is one of the world’s premier strategic branding companies. Since it was founded by Alan Siegel in 1969, the firm has applied the art and science of simplicity to create branding programs that have helped many of the world’s best-known organizations excel. Driven by its philosophy of “Simple is Smart,” Siegel+Gale has led the way in bringing innovation to the corporate branding field, including transforming complex, incomprehensible customer communications into plain English; helping clients create distinctive brand voices across all their communications; transporting brands onto the Internet; and aligning the brand experience for customers with the brand promise.

The firm has worked with an array of leading organizations, including American Express, AARP, College Board, Cornell University, Dell, Duke University, Lexus, MBA.com, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, the National Basketball Association, 3M, Dow, The Four Seasons Hotel Group, Sony PlayStation, and Yahoo! Siegel+Gale has full-service offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Dubai and strategic partnerships around the world.

Siegel+Gale is part of the Omnicom Group Inc, a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom’s branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

To speak with Alan Siegel, or for more information about the Museum of Arts and Design Visionaries! 2008 Award, please contact Davia Temin, Christine Summerson, or Trang Mar of Temin and Company at 212-588-8788 or news@teminandco.com

"Voters in New Jersey will be voting on two public questions that are so confusing the ballot includes interpretive statements longer than the questions themselves," says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel+Gale, a strategic branding firm.

"Try reading ‘Public Question #1′ and its ‘Interpretive Statement’ if you want to be bewildered," says Mr. Siegel.

Public Question #1:

Voters to Approve State Authority Bonds Payable from State Appropriations

Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential government functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of the Constitution?

Interpretive Statement:

This amendment to the State Constitution will require voter approval of new laws that allow the State to borrow money by issuing bonds through any State agency or independent authority backed by a pledge of an annual appropriation to pay the principal and interest on the bonds. New laws to allow the issuance of these State authority bonds for State government purposes will be subject to voter approval. State courts have ruled that the State constitutional requirement that the Legislature and Governor must seek voter approval for bonded debt does not apply to such borrowing. That requirement is followed only for proposed State bonds that contain a binding, non-repealable pledge to pay off the bonds directly with State taxes. Most State authority bonds can be issued without voter approval because the payment of the bonds is backed only by a promise of the Legislature and the Governor that they will enact appropriations in the future to meet the bond payments. The courts have said this is a legal means of avoiding submitting the issuance of debt for voter approval. Laws to permit such debt that are enacted after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution will have to authorize voter referenda for approval of such debts. Exceptions to voter approval for authority bonds will be permitted if the bonds are to be paid off from 1) a source of revenue dedicated by the State Constitution, which only the voters can establish, or 2) an independent non-State government source of payments for use of projects build or obtained with the borrowed money, such as highway tolls or user fees.

"An informal research study I conducted with voters from Union County, New Jersey confirmed that most people aren’t going to vote on these public questions because they can’t understand them," says Mr. Siegel.

"This kind of gobbledygook doesn’t belong on a ballot. It’s about time public voting officials who prepare these ballots use professional communications people to create user-friendly, accessible ballots where complex public questions and referenda are translated into plain English.

"Public officials, including Governor Corzine, should provide voters with a ballot that enables them to make an informed decision," concludes Mr. Siegel.

One thing I’ve learned from this historic Presidential race is that numbers don’t tell the whole story. Maybe that’s because the numbers aren’t presented in a particularly clear or compelling way. As a self-professed political junkie, I surf the cable news channels and political web sites nightly, looking for daily catnip that informs and entertains. One trend I’ve noticed is that many of the news networks and political web sites have invested heavily in data visualization to attempt to tell the polling and state-by-state Electoral College stories in graphic ways. In my view, they have not succeeded. The most notable example is CNN commentator John King, who has his giant "magic map", comprised of blue, light blue, red, pink and gold states (huh?!) that he manipulates with a tactile touch of a finger (spoofed brilliantly in a recent Saturday Night Live skit). CNN’s attempt at mapping the vote seems to be more about showcasing the technology than effectively telling the story.

During the Presidential debates, CNN featured a "people meter" scrolling across the bottom of the screen, measuring focus group reactions to comments made by the candidates in real time. CNN also showcased a convoluted rating system featuring six pundits awarding and subtracting points based on how the candidates performed throughout the debate. At one debate viewing party I attended, the entire room spent the evening trying to dissect and interpret the charts and graphs on the screen, instead of listening to the candidate’s responses. Most of these graphic delights were available only on the high-def TV feed, filling up the letterbox in the margins of the screen. And that seems to be the current state of affairs, at least in the cable news world. Today’s dynamic data visualization is mostly treated like "eye candy" for the digerati, or as a high-tech differentiation technique in the battle for viewers. The promise is so much greater. At its best, data visualization is more than graphic bells and whistles. It provides a clearer, simpler, more intuitive way to convey complex data, and provides real competitive advantage in communicating with users.

Anyone who has heard the expression "a picture tells a thousand words" can grasp the power and potential of data visualization across an almost infinite number of commercial, creative and educational applications. Starting with Da Vinci and Galileo and early 16th century maps, nautical tables and astronomy charts, man has attempted to use pictures instead of words to tell complex stories. The trick, like with all customer experience work, is to start from the bottom up, and base the information design on how people actually process and consume data. Great strides have been made in cognitive research in recent years to better understand how people process, interpret and respond to visual images. Combining this knowledge with advanced information design techniques, the field of dynamic data visualization can help clients tell data-rich stories, on paper and on screens, in more effective ways.

We all know that raw data rarely equals intelligence. But increasingly, data visualization is helping to turn complicated information into visual intelligence in intuitive ways that enhance communication effectiveness and ultimately, the customer experience. Maybe by the next Presidential election, my favorite media outlets won’t feature a bunch of talking heads, but instead, a series of elegantly designed graphics that tell the story better than any pundit can.

Ever hear the term, "Live the Brand?" At Siegel+Gale, we not only deliver great service to our clients, we Live Their Brand! Happy Halloween from the American Express Team at Siegel+Gale! Can you identify which team member represents the following elements of the American Express Card?:

1. The magnetic strip
2. The centurion
3. The microtype
4. The filigree
5. Identity theft
6. The logo type
7. The gingerbread
8. The blue box
9. The PVC core
10. C.F. Frost

Who has taken a hit, and who has remained strong?

"The banks have lost a lot of credibility," said Alan Siegel, the chairman of the New York branding firm Siegel & Gale LLC. "The whole financial sector has, but particularly the banks."

The trouble is not just general industry news, he said; as companies are responding to the crisis, some are undermining the customer relationships they once worked so hard to build.

Many people are losing their homes because of inappropriate loans. Credit is getting harder for businesses and individuals to find. Onerous terms on credit cards raise interest rates for missed payments on other bills. Home equity lines of credit are being withdrawn, even for those with excellent credit who never missed a payment.

"The key to branding is: It’s not what you say. It’s what you do,”" Mr. Siegel said.

Go to www.americanbanker.com for the full story in the Tuesday, October 14th issue.

The Wall Street Journal: The Man Behind the MLB Logo

Every night when Jerry Dior sits down to watch the baseball playoffs in his Edison, N.J., home, the television reflects his life’s most enduring handiwork.

Forty years ago, Mr. Dior worked as a graphic designer at Sandgren & Murtha, a New York City-based marketing company. In 1968, Major League Baseball commissioned the agency to design an original logo. The mark was to serve two purposes: to signify that MLB was placing league-wide merchandizing rights under the auspices of a new umbrella company, and to commemorate the national pastime’s upcoming centennial.

" Baseball was going through a bad period," says Tom Villante, an advertising executive who helped choose the logo. " The NFL was gaining rapidly, and baseball was viewed as my grandfather’s sport. We needed something to give the sport a boost."

Read the complete article

Siegel+Gale, one of the world’s premier strategic branding firms, announced today the appointment of Lee Rafkin as Global Director of Simplification.

"Simplification is the founding philosophy of Siegel+Gale – and a powerful strategic tool in differentiating and transforming brands," says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO. "Lee Rafkin has over 20 years of global experience as both a marketer and a brand strategist. He will lead the Simplification practice across all of Siegel+Gale’s disciplines and offices, and will expand the scope of the practice from designing functional communications to optimizing customer experience in all channels."

Prior to joining Siegel+Gale, Mr. Rafkin was Founder & President of Rafkin & Company, a strategic brand consultancy he founded in 2002, and worked with such blue-chip clients as AOL, Discovery Networks, Reuters, The Tribune Company, SPEED Channel, and shopping-center developer Mills Corporation. Previously, he was an Executive Director at FutureBrand, where he led the Latin America region and was the global client executive for AOL International. He has extensive global branding experience working in China, Europe, and Latin America.

"We live in a complex world full of information overload. Brands that simplify their customer experience in all touchpoints are more likely to win in today’s marketplace," says Rafkin. "There is no firm better positioned to deliver simplified customer experiences than Siegel+Gale, the pioneer of Simplification. I’m thrilled to join the team, and I look forward to growing this essential practice area."

Mr. Rafkin began his career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch. In 1991, he moved to the packaged goods industry as a brand manager at Pillsbury and Nabisco. In 1996, he joined Nickelodeon, where he was director of marketing for the consumer products and licensing division. In 1999, he co-founded Savos, Inc., a wireless Internet startup, and served as its chief marketing officer until the company was sold. He joined the global brand consulting firm FutureBrand as Executive Director in 2001, where he helped acquire a branding firm and establish a brand consulting practice in Brazil, and led engagements in China and throughout Latin America. For the past six years, Mr. Rafkin has led his own strategic brand consultancy, where he worked at the senior level with clients in media, entertainment, news and information, health care, financial services, consumer products, and real estate.

Mr. Rafkin graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in International Relations, magna cum laude, and holds an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management. He lives with his family in South Orange, N.J.

Delivers Keynote Address at HiBrand 2008 International Conference on Branding

"Many global brands project brand voices that are predictable, uninspired, unintelligible, and incoherent," says Alan Siegel, Founder and Chairman of the leading strategic brand consultancy Siegel+Gale. "People pay lip service to brand voice, but it is really getting watered down to strategy decks and pages of over-used words like innovative, collaborative, and integrity that really aren’t driving distinctive and effective brand voices."

Mr. Siegel, who coined the terms brand voice and corporate voice more than 25 years ago, will speak on Brand Voice Today at the HiBrand 2008 International Conference on Branding in Moscow on October 24, 2008. Mr. Siegel’s keynote address will open the HiBrand 2008 program.

HiBrand 2008 is a three-day gathering of 400 global leaders in branding, marketing, design, advertising, and communication from Russia and several European countries. The conference is organized by Identity, the first Russian magazine about branding and commercial design.

"Russia has evolved into a first-rate economic power with rapidly emerging domestic, regional, and global brands," says Mr. Siegel. "Now the country has a community of branding professionals who are looking for the latest trends and insights in branding from around the world."

According to Mr. Siegel, used correctly, "corporate voice" and "brand voice" describe fusing strategy, corporate values, messaging, and identity to communicate a company’s distinctive personality, culture, and value proposition. Mr. Siegel will share his insights into:

• Understanding Brand Voice and how to build it;
• Examples of world-class companies with distinctive brand voices and why they are successful;
• How to continually recalibrate Brand Voice, in this age of dynamic digital media, into Digital Voice.

Why Most of the Media Market Will Weather The Looming Recession – Sort of.

In the face of gloom, doom and justifiable concerns about the health of the global economy, there are some potential bright spots that, while still not fully in the clear of a looming recession, may fare better than others.

To be sure, certain media brands (not all) will likely be the recipients of spending and behavior trends that reinforce the idea that even in economic down-turns consumers still seek out entertainment, in spite of, and sometimes because of, their depressed state. To wit, during the early 1990s trend forecasters, such as Faith Popcorn identified "Cocooning" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocooning) as a trend where consumers, especially during recessionary times, retreat to the comforts and confines of their homes, engage in less socializing and generally insulate themselves from the often harsh realities of the outside world. During this time it was predicted, that people will engage in more electronic commerce, watch more television, rent or download more movies and play more video games.

Today, Cocooning looks to have reemerged on the world stage, aided clearly by the global economic downturn, but also pervasive trends such as the ability of people to work from home, the ubiquity of communications devices that provide 24/7 access, and the demographic reality of an aging Boomer population.

So what does Cocooning imply for media brands? Well, most believe that all brands are going to take a hit over the next 18 months, but some will prosper better than others. Of late, cable programmers such as, SCI-FI (http://www.scifi.com), have posted their best ratings and strongest advertising results EVER. Here, it is reasonable to believe that Cocooning is at work, manifesting itself in viewers desire to transport themselves to an alternative, fictional place, well away from their 401K statement. In this spirit, it is logical that other cable nets such as Discovery, ESPN, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Food Network, will likely benefit from the same phenomena –it makes sense.

Also likely to at least hold their ground during this tempest are cable operators such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision who, having been so successful in bundling their brands into the everyday lives of consumers, now find themselves with very strong and projectable cash flows driven by large, diversified armies of triple-play (Digital TV, Digital Phone and High-Speed Internet) subscribers. However, it is worth noting that all is not rosy for cable operators who, pitted against telcos, face a very competitive environment for the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers (http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/08/technology/cablecompetition.fortune/index.htm). Still, while some consumers will definitely pare back their premium services, today’s cable offering has become consumers’ essential lifeline to the "rest of the world" – the conduit for all home communications. Absent the full deterioration of our economy, which we seem to have avoided, Cocooning 2.0 would indicate that massive churn and defection among cable subs is not a likely reality.

But as some will survive, albeit with challenges, some sectors will not fare as well. Box office sales, for example, are likely to be depressed for the foreseeable future, as an excess of average movies, many financed by hedge funds, (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/16/business/fi-hedge16), begin to flood the theatres at a time when people have much cheaper, and arguably better quality entertainment options at home, as evidenced above. Finally, the jury is still out on how major broadcasters such as NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox will adapt as they see their advertising revenues fall in favor of more targeted media, while at the same time theoretically benefitting from improved ratings, due to viewers opting for "free", ad-supported content versus pay-per view, Netflix and other on-demand pay services.

As a final axiomatic thought there is this: Strong Brands Tend to Survive Bad Times. And as the media industry navigates itself through this economic headwind, marketers must invest in brand building activities that underscore the brand’s necessity to the lives of ’shaken consumers’ closer to home, while also harnessing the brand’s core points of differentiation to the exclusion of competitors.

One of the world’s most aggressive growth economies, Indian corporations are navigating a whole new frontier: How do they build their brands to successfully extend their reach, capture market share and compete head on with the world’s most well-known companies. Co-President and Chief Creative Officer, Howard Belk on India’s Brand New World.

"As Indian companies begin to make their global foray, there are lessons to be learnt on re-branding their existing brands to suit the new conditions.

India’s family controlled conglomerates are facing a brand conundrum: How can they transform brands that are weighted with history and meaning in one market and re-launch them onto the global stage? Given the rapid pace of growth, diversification, acquisition, and investment – and the decision by many companies to go public – Indian businesses are in the midst of a critical decision point about their brands. A customer base that is ever more diverse globally and sophisticated domestically has challenged companies to rethink brand strategy and how it is communicated both, at home and around the world."

download pdf

India has always been known for its holistic approach to health and well-being. From Ayurvedic medicine, yoga and organic foods, India is finding there is a larger untapped global market for wellness brands than ever before. Fred Burt, Managing Director of Siegel+Gale London comments on Wellness Branding both in and outside of India and how Indian companies can position themselves for global growth.

"It’s a holisitc approach to balancing the mind, body and spirit. The Mind — mental balance, clarity of thought, ability to sustain concentration and focus; the Body — preventative actions, particularly in terms of what we eat and physical exercise, to keep the body in as good a form as possible: and, the Spirit — the desire to ‘feel’ better and more at one, connected with the world around you. For some, this has a religious purpose while, for others, it is simply a sense of well–being that transcends the mental and the physical. None of these components of wellness are to do with getting healthy, to fixing a health-related problem. So, I think there is an element of wellness that requires health to be in place. Without health, the consumer doesn’t really have the inclination to worry about wellness."

download pdf

Pizza or pasta? Seems as though Pizza Hut is rebranding itself in the UK market as Pasta Hut? Quick fix to a broader issue? Fred Burt from our London office comments on this story in Marketing Week UK.

"Many believe that Pizza Hut needs to change consumer perception rather than rebrand. Fred Burt, managing director of branding agency Siegel+Gale, says the move “risks squandering years of brand equity”. “This feels like a strategy-by-focus-group. Research should inform the brand strategy, not lead it.”

He adds: “The brand issue with Pizza Hut is not its name but its relevance. The product offer has changed but the experience is much as it has been for 20 years. That’s where the chain should spend its money.”"

Read the entire article

Banks get bigger while some of the world’s most prestigious financial services brands RIP. What are the repercussions for both retail and commercial customers? Will they ever trust again? Alan Siegel comments on how brands that survive the global financial meltdown should best interact with their customers.

Go to www.adage.com to read the full story in the October 13th issue.