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Your online image is more important than ever — here are 5 ways it can make or break you

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coworkers laptops

You're hardly the only person who's ever Google-stalked a crush or scoured a future employer's Facebook page. In fact, there's a really good chance that the person or the company has done exactly the same reconnaissance on you.

What they find can have a profound impact on your relationship (or potential relationship) with them. Which is to say: The "real you," or your personal brand, now encompasses your behavior in face-to-face interactions and your behavior online.

Below, Business Insider has rounded up five examples of times when you might be judged —fairly or unfairly — based on your online presence.

SEE ALSO: 3 things you're doing on Facebook that make people dislike you immediately

60% of employers use social media to screen job candidates

That's according to a 2016 CareerBuilder survey of 2,186 hiring managers and human resource professionals. It's a meaningful increase from the previous year, when the survey found that 52% of employers reported using social media to screen candidates.

Meanwhile, 59% of employers said they use search engines to research candidates.

Interestingly, just 21% of employers surveyed said they're looking for reasons to disqualify the candidates, such as information about those candidates drinking or using drugs. Most employers — 60% — are looking for something that supports their qualifications, such as a professional portfolio.

Remember, too: You're hardly out of the woods once you get hired somewhere. As many as 41% of employers in the CareerBuilder survey said they use social media to research current employees — and 26% have found something that's caused them to reprimand or dismiss an employee.



Nearly half of single women research someone on Facebook before a first date

And 38% of men say they do the same, according to a 2013 survey by online dating site Match.

If something unsavory does come up, 49% of women and 27% of men say it would motivate them to the cancel the date.

Some people seem to have caught on — just over a quarter of single men and women say they have cleaned up or would clean up their Facebook profile before accepting a friend request from someone they were interested in.



About half of married Brits have secretly checked their partner's Facebook account

A 2015 survey organized by law firm Slater and Gordon found that one in five of the Facebook snoopers ended up fighting about what they found — and one in seven have considered divorce because of it.

Distressing findings, according to the survey, included contact with an ex-partner, secret correspondence, and inappropriate photos.

As Andrea Newbury, head of family law at Slater and Gordon, said in a release:

“Five years ago Facebook was rarely mentioned in the context of a marriage ending, but now it has become common place for clients to cite social media use, or something they discovered on social media, as a reason for divorce."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Music superstars like The Weeknd are using a classic tech startup strategy to rule the future

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Getty Images the weeknd

Some of the world's top music artists are turning to a classic tech startup strategy to find success in the digital age: scale with a compelling free product, and then convert your most passionate users into paying customers.

In a new interview, Abel "the Weeknd" Tesfaye described his initial breakout, which came with a series of mysterious free mixtapes starting around 2011.

"I really wanted people who had no idea who I was to hear my project," the 27-year-old Toronto native told Forbes. "You don't do that by asking for money."

The idea was to get his music into the hands of as many people as possible. That notion was partially driven by the understanding that live concerts is where a big chunk of money is made, and this income stream only comes from passionate fans.

"We live in a world where artists don't really make the money off the music like we did in the Golden Age,"Tesfaye said. "It's not really coming in until you hit the stage."

Tesfaye isn't the only star who has recognized that the "freemium" model favored by many tech companies, or something close to it, is effective in the new era of music.

“For the artists' fans and for artists, in terms of exposure, music should be everywhere and as easily accessible as humanly possible ... especially for an artist you are still building,” Andrew Gertler, who manages teen singer-songwriter sensation Shawn Mendes, told Business Insider last month.

“The music really is not as much the revenue generator as the marketing tool to then create other income streams,” Gertler explained.

Those other income streams include not only things like live events and brand deals, but also opportunities at the crossroads of music and TV (or video in general), where Gertler said the line is getting more and more blurred. Forbes also notes that Tesfaye has made a bundle on festival and arena concerts, and deals with big names like Apple.

Tesfaye and Mendes have recognized that while the actual recorded music might not be the revenue driver it once was, it is still a way to get a music artist incredible reach. If that artist has a valuable product, this reach will create a subset of loyal fans, who can help drive the real moneymakers.

SEE ALSO: As YouTube stars pursue new dreams, keeping millions of loyal fans happy is a tough balancing act

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NOW WATCH: How to undo sent emails in Gmail

Lincoln is taking on BMW, Audi, and Mercedes by pushing into new markets and ramping up exclusive services (F)

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Lincoln Navigator at NYC Seaport

Lincoln, Ford's luxury brand, was on the chopping block after the financial crisis. But Ford decided to keep Lincoln alive and invest in a turnaround.

That process is now well underway, as Lincoln has relaunched its famous Continental nameplate on a new flagship sedan and is preparing to roll out the latest version of its all-important Navigator SUV.

But Lincoln continues to face challenges, particularly as it develops the brand to compete against heavy hitters, including BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, and its Detroit rival Cadillac. The theme the carmaker has chosen is "Quiet Luxury," to contrast its low-key approach with the more in-your-face, high-performance approach that other luxury auto brands employ.

Borrowing a page from Lexus' mid-2000s "relentless pursuit of perfection" marketing and advertising campaign — but with a suave, "Mad Men"-like American updating and the hiring of Matthew McConaughey as a pitchman — Lincoln is speaking softly, not shouting.

Lincoln Continental 1

Last year, the company opened its first Experience Center in California's Orange Country, a traditionally tough market for Lincoln. A Dallas location followed. Now Lincoln brought something similar to New York, partnering with the Howard Hughes Corporation in September to join in a revitalization of the Seaport District, a dining-and-shopping destination located in a historical section of lower Manhattan.

"We're bringing the brand to where affluent customers are hanging out naturally," Kumar Galhotra, Lincoln's President, told Business Insider, adding that the Seaport collaboration provides an "opportunity to create new experiences  and engage customers at a personal level."

Galhotra said that Experience Center at Newport Beach in Orange County has thus far been well-received, but he cautioned that Dallas, despite being a better market for Lincoln, is still a work-in-progress.

"We start with the customer and stay incredibly focused," he said, pointing out that for Lincoln to succeed, it has to expand the suite of services it can provide, such as a new chauffeuring offering, without overdoing it. He used package delivery as an example of a possible overreach. 

"A customer will say that they have Amazon to do that," he said.

Kumar Galhotra

At the Seaport, Lincoln hosted a concert event in September and also constructed an experiential event around the new Navigator. Similar events will take place in coming years via the extended collaboration with Hughes, the company said.

Lincoln is also working to change the car-buying experience, enabling 24-to-48-hour test drives, after which a dealer representative can bring financing and insurance paperwork to a customers house and leave the vehicle behind, if the customer decides to buy.

"Our lives are expanding,"Galhotra said. "Things that used to be effortful have become effortless."

Lincoln doesn't want to miss out on that trend. And the effort extends to every aspect of the brand. 

The results thus far have been encouraging. Sales for 2017 are on track to nearly match 2016's, when Lincoln sold about 112,000 new cars and SUVs and enjoyed its best year since the brand's turnaround began.

And while Lincoln sells fewer vehicles annually than Cadillac, it has been able to grow sales at a time when the market appears to be flattening ahead of a downturn, especially for luxury badges. 

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NOW WATCH: Ford replacing its CEO points to the short-termism on Wall Street

Someone figured out why the KFC Twitter account follows just 11 people — it's a brilliant marketing ploy

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KFC Twitter

The Twitter account of global fast-food giant KFC has more than 1.2 million followers, but it follows only five English women and six men in return. They’re all certified accounts.

The women include Victoria Beckham, Mel B, and Geri Halliwell.

The six men include a musician, journalist, a Green Bay Packers player, a university football coach, and the LA city council president.

The men have one thing in common: They’re all called Herb.

The woman are all former Spice Girls, which — drumroll — gives KFC ... 11 Herbs and Spices.

We have Twitter’s Mike Edgette, social-media manager at Tall Grass PR, to thank for solving one of the biggest mysteries since Stephen Hawking tackled Black Hole Theory.

We dip our hat to you, sir.

SEE ALSO: Arby's sent sandwiches and a puppy to its biggest troll, and it shows why its transformation has been so successful

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NOW WATCH: We compared Popeyes and KFC fried chicken — here's the verdict

Everyone is calling the new iPhone X the 'Ecks' even though Apple says it's pronounced '10' (AAPL)

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iPhone X Tim Cook

With a massive screen behind him displaying the text, "iPhone X"Tim Cook hopped on the stage at the Steve Jobs Theater during Apple's September 12 launch event and proclaimed, "This is the iPhone ten."

Apple consumers across the globe have been in a tizzy ever since, and not just over the souped-up phone, but over how on earth to pronounce its name. 

The "X" refers to the Roman numeral 10, not the letter of the alphabet, and is supposed to mark the ten-year anniversary of the release of the original iPhone. But the diction dictate from Apple and its mandarins does not appear to be getting through to the masses. 

Whether out of confusion, personal preference or mere stubbornness, many people, it seems, prefer to call the new iPhone the "Ecks," like the letter.

 The $999 iPhone X doesn't hit store shelves until November 3, but with a massive marketing machine and press cycle already swinging into action, the norms and customs that will define the new phone's identity are being established now.

With that in mind, we took to the streets of San Francisco to see if we could find out what the general public has decided to call Apple's new phone. 

More natural

Apple Store iPhoneOur first stop was at the Apple store in San Francisco's Union Square

The first customer we queried was browsing a display of phone cases, and quickly responded that the phone was called the "iPhone Ecks." He immediately started second guessing himself but eventually settled on his original pronunciation. The next shopper knew it was supposed to be pronounced as the number ten, but said using 'X' was much more natural. 

Early lunchers at a nearby park had a different perspective. An avid Apple user said she called it the ten, but thought it was funny Apple had decided to use the 'X' symbol in all the marketing. A man at a table nearby had watched Cook at the Apple event and called it ten ever since.

We decided to head to a few close-by wireless service provider retail stores to see what the people selling the phones and interacting with customers all day had to say. 

At the Verizon store, general manager Ryan Gish said, "Everyone's been calling it the ten. I've called it the 'X' a couple times but been corrected, I know it's supposed to be called the ten.”

Daniela Contreras, a T-Mobile sales representative, had a different interpretation, saying that all of her customers had been calling it the "X." She reasoned that since the X was the Roman numeral representing 10, it was supposed to be called the X. 

Snafu or masterstroke?

It's not the first time Apple has burdened its customers with uncertainty and angst over its product names. Before it changed to macOS, Apple called its desktop operating systems Mac OS X. The company eventually dropped the X to make its computer operating system more in line with iOS, watchOS, and tvOS products.

Whether the iPhone X name ends up being a clever marketing move or a branding snafu for future business school textbooks remains to be seen.

Apple StoreIf the Ecks pronunciation sticks, it could actually save Apple from another potential branding headache: Given that both the new iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 models are available this year, what will become of 9? Will Apple try to drum up excitement for an iPhone 9 next September, a year after the iPhone 10 came out? Or will an iPhone 9 never see the light of day, like a lost manuscript that gains mythical status over the years?

Ryan, an employee at a San Francisco AT&T store, had just gotten back from vacation and said he'd been the calling the new phone the "Ecks," until it had dawned on him that since all the other iPhones had been numbered, it made no sense that Apple would suddenly switch to letters. 

Brandon Iaacson, the manager at the AT&T store, acknowledged that the official pronunciation was ten. But he hadn't made a habit of correcting wayward customers.

"It's called the 10 but customers say Ecks," he explained, "and we just roll with it."

Even well-known tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee gave up on the correct pronunciation. 

 An earlier version of this story appeared on September 28. 

SEE ALSO: Here's everything Apple announced at its big iPhone launch event

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NOW WATCH: I spent a week using the iPhone 8 and I think you should wait for the iPhone X — here's why

Arby's sent sandwiches and a puppy to its biggest troll, and it shows why its transformation has been so successful

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brendan kelly nihilist arbys

This story was originally published on July 19, 2017.

On January 14, 2015, a Twitter account named Nihilist Arby's was born, and it didn't take long for Arby's corporate office to notice.

With a double beef and cheese as its avatar, the angst-ridden account confronted followers with a negation of everything they held dear in life and offered they fill that void with a sandwich and curly fries.

By mid-February, Nihilist Arby's had 13,000 followers and, as Adweek noted, a significantly better engagement rate than the real Arby's account, which had nearly 400,000 followers.

At the same time, Arby's was receiving praise in the press and on Twitter for acknowledging years of being the butt of "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's jokes with a clever joke of its own on the day Stewart announced he would retire from the show that year. A year earlier, an Arby's tweet reacting to the musician Pharrell Williams' Arby's-logo-esque hat worn in a Grammys performance went viral.

Arby's was now a "cool" brand on Twitter. If it overreacted to Nihilist Arby's, no matter how dark or raunchy the tweets got, it would risk becoming just another lame corporate account. The Arby's team let it be.

Then, in August, Adweek revealed that the man behind the account was Brendan Kelly, a longtime punk-band frontman from Chicago with a day job in advertising.

Arby's CEO Paul Brown and his marketing team read the piece.

"We had discussions around what do we do with that? And we said, 'Well, one, even if we wanted to do something, we couldn't,'" Brown told Business Insider. "But we also had a little fun with him, too."

Arby's would soon make peace with its nihilist counterpart, flying an executive out to meet Kelly with a bag of food and a puppy.

The inanity of corporate Twitter

Kelly is well-known in the punk scene for his bands the Lawrence Arms, the Falcon, and the Wandering Birds, and he has been touring since he was a teenager in the '90s.

About six years ago, when crossing the country in a packed van for months at a time lost its appeal, he got into the more stable world of advertising. He would still record and play music, just a bit less frequently. And while working as a copywriter wasn't exactly punk, it was still a creative outlet.

In January 2015, Kelly was working at the ad agency FCB when he found himself in a conference room with a brand executive pitching Twitter strategy to the head of social media.

"It just seemed so impossible and stupid," Kelly told Business Insider.

He imagined a scenario where someone in charge of a brand's Twitter account lacked the executive's naive enthusiasm and instead had a "red pill" experience, a reference to the pill in "The Matrix" that frees people from an artificial world. This social-media employee would be "exposed to how f---ing horrendously tragic life actually is — you know, how meaningless everything is," Kelly said, laughing.

A phrase that popped into his head was "Nihilist Arby's," which had less to do with anything specific about Arby's and more with how goofy it sounded. Kelly decided he would make this hypothetical account real, just to amuse himself.

He was going to give it a cleverer name when he decided to follow advice that helped guide his approach to his job. A mentor of his told him that effective advertising used extremes to grab potential customers' attention.

"It's got to be a little bit stupid," he said this mentor told him.

After nearly five months of running the increasingly popular account, Kelly thought it would be fun to bring even more attention to it. Using his showmanship and marketing skills, he produced a minute-and-a-half video that opened with him saying, "I was born out of an infinite blackness." A couple of his Wandering Birds songs provide the soundtrack.

He sent the video from his Nihilist Arby's Gmail account to David Anthony, the music editor at The AV Club, The Onion's nonsatirical site. (Kelly now works for The Onion's ad team, Onion Labs.) Anthony immediately recognized Kelly in the video and wrote it up, bringing more exposure to Kelly's parody account as well as his bands.

But Anthony didn't conclude whether Kelly was the creator of Nihilist Arby's or had just collaborated on this weird video.

That August, Christopher Heine at Adweek reached out to the same Gmail account that contacted The AV Club. He asked if Kelly was the one behind it and whether he'd like to talk about it.

"So at that point I was like, yeah, I'm ready to tell people, I don't care," Kelly said.

On August 13, Heine published a profile of Kelly that ran across three pages in the print edition of Adweek. It included praise from ad creatives about how Kelly demonstrated genuinely sharp insight into what young people look for on social media. Kelly thought it made him look great.

"I almost got fired for that, actually," he said.

Even though FCB was not mentioned in the article, managers at the agency were afraid Kelly's hijinks could compromise some of their accounts. Kelly said his boss gave him a warning: "You cannot talk about this at all. I don't want to hear the word 'Arby's' in this office."

As his job hung in the balance because of the profile, he began receiving interesting job offers from other agencies for the same reason.

Arby's makes peace

Meanwhile, at Arby's headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, Brown and his leadership team discussed the Adweek profile. Brown said it could be difficult as a CEO to see your company be the subject of harsh jokes, but that the success of playfully sparring with Stewart earlier that year was a teaching moment.

"Do you write a cease-and-desist letter?" Brown said. "The way I look at it is what kind of person do you want to be a friend with? You don't want to be a friend with that kind of a person who's defensive and you can't joke around."

Six days after the Adweek story, Kelly was at FCB's offices in Chicago's John Hancock Center preparing to leave early for a secret job interview he'd landed as a result of that profile. Before he could leave, he got a call around 3:30 from the building's front desk letting him know that a team from Arby's was there to see him.

Kelly said the thought that the team was there to confront him never crossed his mind. But some of his coworkers he told on his way out came down to the lobby with him, "inspired by the promise of free food, the curiosity surrounding my weirdly popular Twitter account, and, finally, because the whole thing had become such a weirdly forbidden topic in the office," Kelly said.

Christopher Fuller, Arby's senior vice president of communications, was there with several members of Arby's marketing team, a bag full of sandwiches, and a black Labrador puppy they had borrowed from a friend. They greeted Kelly and handed him a handwritten note on Arby's stationery: "Cheer up, buddy. You live in a world with puppies ... and sandwiches."

Kelly later posted a photo of the exchange on his personal Twitter account, expressing sincere gratitude at the gesture.

"I don't want to give away the mystique surrounding the man behind the tweets," Fuller told Business Insider "I'll just say his personal demeanor is very different from his online disposition. He seemed like an all-around nice guy."

Kelly got on the ground with the dog and had a pleasant chat with the Arby's team, but he still needed to rush out of there for his job interview disguised as a doctor's appointment.

"It's kind of hard to have regrets about a stupid parody Twitter account about the futility of corporate Twitter, but I do regret that not going a little more smoothly," Kelly said of the meeting with the Arby's team. "But I really would have liked to have hung out a little more with those people and talked to them." He said he wanted to get more insight into how they approach handling their brand and what they thought when they discovered his account.

The bag of sandwiches was a gift to Kelly and his coworkers, but because anything related to Nihilist Arby's was off-limits in the office upstairs, he couldn't even send one of his friends up with the food. He grabbed one of the Loaded Italian subs — a sandwich name that could be used to describe him a lot of the time, he said — and left the rest with a coworker who said he'd give the rest to homeless people. ("I don't know if that happened or not, but he seemed pretty motivated, I guess," Kelly said.)

The interview didn't lead to anything, but Kelly can now be open about his Nihilist Arby's account at his job at The Onion, and he even sells Nihilist Arby's merch.

The account now has nearly 300,000 followers, and his tweets get thousands of interactions. Arby's marketing team still keeps an eye on it.

"We've cringed, laughed, and maybe even cried just a little," Fuller said.

Kelly is still an Arby's fan, no matter how caustic his parody account gets.

"I try to mix it up a little bit," he said of his orders. "But I like a good Beef and Cheddar. I like that Loaded Italian. I like the potato cakes quite a bit."

We told him we ate some of the potato cakes the day before.

"That's about where I'm at," he said.

SEE ALSO: The Arby's CEO asked 1,000 US employees the same question before his hugely successful brand turnaround

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NOW WATCH: Michael Lewis on how to deal with bosses and control your own career

Forget 'Make America Great Again' — Wharton professor says Trump has been terrible for America's brand

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On a very sunny day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Business Insider's Sara Silverstein spoke with Wharton School marketing professor David Reibstein. Following is a transcript of the video.

Sara Silverstein: And how does somebody like Trump affect America's brand?

David Reibstein: So a lot of where a country gets its image is from its overall long-term reputation and the products that come from there. But also some of the people that come from there and the political leaders definitely have an impact. And so the image of Trump carries over to the US and directly affects the US brand. So what I've observed is when I first did the study two years ago — and I did it together withUS News and WPP— when I first did this study, the US was ranked as the fourth-best brand. I next measured it immediately after the election, we fell to number seven and we've now fallen to number eight in the world. So this whole notion of make America great again, it should be the number one brand — we're now in the number eight position, not the number one.

Silverstein: And there will be some economic repercussions for that you think as far as capital coming in and trade?

Reibstein: Absolutely, so we see it through policy as well as just imagery. So in terms of immigration and closing the borders for immigration — that has an impact — the sense of pulling out of the Paris Accord has an impact of how much we care about the world. Tourism — people are less willing to come to the United States, less willing to start businesses in the United States, and have a lower inclination to buy products from the US. So it has a direct impact on our economy.

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There's a reason Coca-Cola's branding is red — and it has to do with booze

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Botella Roja de Coca Cola

  • The iconic red of Coca-Cola is easy to spot — but few people know why the colour was chosen.
  • According to the company, the barrels of bottles were originally painted red so tax agents could distinguish them from alcohol during transport.
  • The red colour is a mixture of three different shades.


You don't even need to see its logo — a brief glimpse at the simple bottle cap on a bar counter or the can on a supermarket shelf is enough to identify that this soft drink is indeed a Coca-Cola.

The brand's impactful design is comparable to other industry greats such as Apple (so white, with its pure, straight-line boxes and its bitten apple), Twitter (that little bird), or Chanel (its two crossed 'C' letters and its eternal black-and-white combination), among others.

In the case of Coca-Cola, it's clear that it's the red color that we look for, or that lets us know what we're drinking.

But why red?

The company says the red color comes from the early days of the creation of the soft drink, more than 130 years ago. 

Coca-Cola was first sold in pharmacies in 1886 as a syrup for digestion that supposedly gave energy, glass by glass.

Five years later, the company was created, and in 1897 it was already being bottled throughout the United States — although at first, each bottler used its own label.

According to the brand, "from the mid-1990s, we began painting our barrels red so that tax agents could distinguish them from alcohol during transport."

That seems to be the origin of the iconic red that artists Salvador Dalí (in 1943) and Andy Warhol (in the 1960s) came to paint.

In 1892, the brand's first "wall painted" posters were designed with a red background with white letters.

Coca Cola botella Contour

The official colour of the beverage was created by mixing three different shades of red, but it is not registered in colour catalogues or by Pantone, because it's a combination.

On the other hand, the brand's typography is actually registered. It's called "Spencerian," and it became one of the favourites in the design world at the end of the 19th century and has remained associated with the brand ever since.

The Coca-Cola bottle, called the "Contour," is the other thing that has also remained the same since 1899.

What has changed is the tin can, which was created in 1945 to supply the drink to soldiers displaced in World War II. Although its size is the same, its design evolves.

coke cans

SEE ALSO: A wine expert says you shouldn't drink Champagne from a traditional flute — here's the glass you should use instead

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NOW WATCH: 5 science facts that 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' totally ignored


15 famous food brands that have different names around the world

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hellmanns best foods

You know that some of the words we use in America are translated differently in other countries — the word "hall" in America is sometimes called a "corridor" in England — but did you know that some of the biggest brands masquerade behind other monikers, too?

Whether because of language laws, trademark issues, or franchising, the following 15 food brands go by multiple names depending on which region you're eating them in.

Keep reading to see what your favorite food is called abroad.

KFC is called PFK in Quebec, Canada.

Popular fried chicken chain KFC doesn't go by "PFK" in Quebec, Canada just for fun. In accordance with Section 63 of Quebec's French Language Charter — which states that the name of an enterprise must be in French— the fast food franchise changed its name to PFK, or "Poulet Frit Kentucky."



3 Musketeers are called Milky Ways in Europe...

Both candy bars feature fluffy, whipped nougat enveloped in chocolate.



But American Milky Ways are called Mars Bars in Europe.

The American Milky Way bar was first released in 1923; many believe the bar was named after the solar system, but its moniker actually stemmed from a popular drink called malted milk.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Amazon has been quietly evolving Prime's look, and it signifies massive changes to the service (AMZN)

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Whole Foods Prime Signage

  • Amazon quietly updated the logos for all of its Prime services earlier this year, dropping the word Amazon.
  • Prime is now a brand in its own right.
  • It signifies Amazon is taking Prime beyond the Amazon-branded ecosystem as it heads into Whole Foods stores and elsewhere.

Earlier this year, Amazon refreshed its logos for its Prime services.

Notably, it dropped the word "Amazon" altogether.

prime logo evolution

In its new logo, Amazon Prime became simply Prime, Amazon Prime Video became Prime Video, and Amazon Prime Now became Prime Now.

In place of Amazon's signature orange and yellow, Prime services now uniformly carry a calming blue hue. It's Prime blue, the color that signifies to shoppers on Amazon.com: "Hey, this item is one of the things you can get free two-day shipping on."

Prime EnvelopeThe move signifies what Amazon has likely long considered: Prime is a brand in its own right, and it's time for it to stand on its own two-day shipping feet.

Amazon is now rolling out the new logo to more facets of its operations. The tape that holds together Amazon boxes now carries just the Prime logo, and the mailer bags for smaller items are white with a blue Prime logo. 

Even the sign-up page for Prime on Amazon.com, with copious amounts of blue and fun cartoonish figures, barely mentions the word "Amazon."

The most brazen example of this new branding strategy occurred when Prime started integrating with Whole Foods stores.

In place of Whole Foods' typical muted signs are bright blue ones calling Prime members' attention to the deals that are designed just for their benefit. Workers were given blue Prime hats, shirts, and aprons to wear to advertise the deals.

What you won't find in the store: any mention of the word Amazon. It appears on none of the signs, clothing, or other marketing materials. Not even the Whole Foods app, which customers must sign in to with their Prime accounts to get a code to scan at checkout, has the word Amazon in it.

Amazon is clearly signifying something of a separation between Prime and Amazon, and it perhaps wants customers to think of Prime as a service that offers benefits beyond the Amazon-branded ecosystem.

Whole Foods and the gaming-streaming service Twitch — which allows for free Twitch Prime membership with an Amazon Prime subscription  — are just a few examples of where Amazon is taking the Prime brand outside of Amazon. But, it seems the sky is the limit for the service.

It makes sense for Amazon to invest so much in Prime's branding: the service is one of, if not the most, important part of its retail business. Its subscribers are, overall, pleased with it, and they often spend more money, more often on Amazon. In April, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that more than 100 million people pay for Prime

SEE ALSO: Amazon is quietly upending a $19 billion business, and it's terrible news for Target and Bed Bath & Beyond

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NOW WATCH: What it's like inside North Korea's controversial restaurant chain

Two entrepreneurs who appeared on 'Shark Tank' scored $100,000, but a piece of advice from one of the Sharks ended up being much more important

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shark tank kitchen safe

  • The entrepreneurs behind Kitchen Safe, a time-lock container, scored a $100,000 deal on a 2014 episode of "Shark Tank."
  • But the more important takeaway for them was advice they received from guest Shark Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro.
  • Woodman told them to change the name of their company so people wouldn't associate it strictly with kitchen-related items.


In 2014, entrepreneurs David Krippendorf and Ryan Tseng scored a $100,000 deal on an episode of "Shark Tank" after delivering one of the most enthusiastic pitches in show history.

They had successfully sold two investors on their product Kitchen Safe, a plastic storage container with a time-lock lid that prevents users from accessing junk food or anything else they want to cut back on.

But a $100,000 deal wasn't the only thing they walked away with. A piece of advice one of the Sharks gave them ultimately led the pair to change the name of their product, a risky move they say has brought them even more success.

The Shark was Nick Woodman, the CEO of GoPro and a guest investor on the show that episode. During the pitch, Woodman suggested that Kitchen Safe was the wrong name for a product that could be used to store not just snacks, but other items people might want to cut back from using, like alcohol, cigarettes, credit cards, or their phone.

"Kitchen Safe is maybe a little bit limited as a company name, because you're going to want to grow into new products, and perhaps new verticals where this is not even in the kitchen," Woodman told the entrepreneurs.

He continued: "I was really lucky. Originally I just meant for GoPro to be a surf camera company, and thankfully, I didn't name the company 'Surf Camera.' So I don't think that people are going to naturally think to put anything other than food in this."

Despite his reservations on the product's name, Woodman offered the pair $100,000 for 20% of the company in a joint deal with Lori Greiner, which Krippendorf and Tseng accepted.

Sure enough, a few weeks after the show aired, the pair took Woodman's advice to heart and rebranded Kitchen Safe as kSafe, the name it goes by today.

"When I invented this, I was thinking about food. That was my use," Krippendorf told Business Insider. 

But the change to kSafe has had a big impact on the way customers perceive the product.

"It speaks to people in different ways," he told Business Insider. "If you're sitting there using it for pills, or medications, or alcohol, or cigarettes, it's not really kitchen. And kSafe really speaks to electronic use, because a lot of people out there want to disconnect from their phone."

Cementing the pivot to a more general container, the company introduced a miniature version of its product to be used for phones and other devices that is now their most popular seller, Krippendorf said. In all, half of kSafe customers use the container for something other than food, he said.

Four years after their appearance on "Shark Tank," Krippendorf said the company has sold $2 million in kSafes and continues to grow — something that may never have been possible had it kept its original name.

"Nick Woodman’s comments about the name really resonated with us," he told Business Insider. "When someone incredibly successful gives me advice, I tend to follow it."

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I name brands and companies for a living — here's what it takes to succeed as a 'professional namer'

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brand names

  • Brand names for companies and products are sometimes developed by professional 'namers.'
  • Rob Meyerson, a brand consultant, spoke with ten professional namers about how they come up with brand names.
  • Naming brands is a creative process — and sometimes it's helpful to maintain an 'open source' mindset to share ideas and the latest tools and trends.
  • Mutiple namers also said one of the best ways to keep the creative juices flowing is to stop working for a period of time, or change modalities. 
  • Technology and unexpected angles can also help generate creative product and brand names.

A few months ago, I met up with a woman who wanted to become a professional namer — a consultant who specializes in developing brand names for companies and products.

With over a decade in the world of naming, I'd had this conversation before. I'm usually asked some combination of, "That's a job?" and "I think I'd be good at that — how can I become a professional namer?"

But this time I got a question I hadn't heard before. She asked me, "How do you come up with name ideas?"

Simple as it seems, I realized I'd not only never answered this question but had never asked anyone else in the professional naming community whether they do it the same way I do.

So over the following months, I conducted 10 in-depth interviews with some of the world's top brand-naming experts. Each one answered similar, specific questions: "What's your process?""What resources do you use?""What do you do when you get stuck?"

Below are five things anyone can learn about how to become a good namer:

1. Maintain an 'open-source' mindset

At first, I was hesitant to reach out to fellow namers and ask how they approach the job. What if they thought I was fishing for trade secrets?

I quickly learned, however, that leading namers are more than willing to share their tactics. Maybe some businesspeople are happy to share because they're already successful and feel they have nothing to lose, but I believe these namers are at the top of their game, in part, because of their openness. Creative professionals who actively participate in an "open-source" community not only share their ideas but are also more likely to be aware of the latest tools and trends.

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Anthony Shore of Operative Words, who the BBC called"one of the world's most sought-after people when it comes to naming new businesses and products," said, "I give away what I know, because I want other namers — even my direct competitors — to come up with great names so that they can also populate the world with words that are interesting and creative."

2. Think of technology as an opportunity, not a threat

Computers are getting faster, smarter, and more efficient. Every month, I see more and more promotions for computer-aided creative services like logo design and naming.

While many creative professionals are understandably annoyed by tools like these (and the unreasonable price expectations they often create), we'd all be wise to think of them not as competitive threats, but as tools to augment our creative processes.

Shore is already using AI to expand his naming process and believes that, in the future, "accessible AI tools for name generation will increase everyone's access to interesting names."

And Amanda Peterson, formerly head of naming at Google, added machine learning to her own name generation process to send it into an insane drive.

men working laptop computers

Sometimes quantity can help give rise to quality — as long as you have an eye for what works, which is where humans still have an advantage. Jonathan Bell, managing director of WANT, explains that he's not too worried, and doesn't see the technology as a threat.

"I always say that our job isn't to create a name, it's to help you pick one," he said.

3. To get the work done, stop working

Multiple namers said the best way to keep the creative juices flowing on a project is to stop working on it for some time.

Scott Milano, managing director of brand naming agency, Tanj, suggests people frustrated by their projects should step away from the project for a brief period of time. "Even if it's a couple hours, or a day or so, just do not think about it, and try to come back to it with fresh eyes."

And Clive Chafer, a 30-year naming veteran, has a suggestion for what to do during that time away from the work. "Exercise is terrific at reframing the brain — at throwing the pieces up and letting them fall down in different places," he said.

4. Mix up your modality

Like any other creative process, name generation can start to feel almost automated when done over and over again. While following the same steps every time can increase speed and efficiency, this complacency can lead to a lack of originality. The naming experts I spoke to endorsed the idea of changing up their routines to help spur lateral thinking and new ideas.

Shannon DeJong, CEO of House of Who, said that if she's been sitting in front of a computer all day, opening an Excel spreadsheet will kill her creative mojo. Instead, she grabs pen and paper and goes for a walk.

In addition to switching from digital to analog, another "modality shift" includes moving from words to imagery. Milano said, "I like how it just kind of lets me forget the words themselves, and just kind of float, conceptually, and find new territories."

Yet another option is to switch from individual work to group work. Bell said developing name ideas can be an individual brainstorming process, or it can be done on a whiteboard with a group.

5. Attack the problem from an unexpected angle

Approaching a project from unexpected angles often helps namers broaden their thinking.

For example, when naming a new brand of long-lasting batteries, namers might instead imagine they're naming a long-lasting energy drink. "By thinking through an attribute as it appears somewhere else, you are able to find ideas that are differentiated but relevant, because when you take a word from a different category and drop it into a relevant category, it immediately becomes relevant to that new category," Shore said.

Other examples include changing the physical environment, or shocking the system by purposely coming up with bad ideas. When DeJong needs to dig deeper on projects that require "more tranquil, open, expansive ideas," she may drive an hour away to a different location to give herself more space and beauty.

Friends Talking

And Eli Altman, creative director of A Hundred Monkeys, advocates coming up with bad ideas first because "people are actually a lot better at coming up with bad names than they are at coming up with good names." Once you come up with some bad names, identify what makes them bad, and then flip the equation.

Naming is a niche within a niche — only a handful of brand consultants fully dedicate themselves to the art. By sharing the key elements to naming, I hope to inspire and provide insight on how to hone creative techniques — and how successful namers come up with brand names.

Rob Meyerson is a brand consultant and professional namer. He runs the site How Brands Are Built and hosts a podcast of the same name. He is also principal and founder of Heirloom, an independent brand strategy and identity firm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SEE ALSO: I'm a CEO and the most underrated business skill is one most people are terrible at

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7 of the most controversial rebrands of the year

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  • Sometimes, companies rebrand when they feel like they need a refresh.
  • Often, these rebrands are successful.
  • Other times, fans get really heated about the changes, like when Dunkin' Donuts dropped the "Donuts" from its name, and Weight Watchers decided to become WW.

When done right, a company rebrand can inspire new fans and increase sales. However, with change often comes backlash.

Fans freaked out over Dunkin' Donuts' decision to drop the "Donuts" from its name, and complained when Weight Watchers changed its name to simply WW.

Only time will tell if these rebrands were a success, or whether the companies would have been better off doing nothing.

Keep scrolling to see some of the most controversial rebrands of 2018.

Weight Watchers changed its name to WW.

Weight Watchers has been around since 1963, and is one of the most famous weight loss programs in the country. It has even been backed by Oprah, who is a member of the company's board and owns a stake in it.

In September, Weight Watchers rebranded itself as WW in an effort to focus on overall health as opposed to just weight loss. While some people liked the changes that came with the rebrand, such as the WellnessWins reward system, critics felt that the change did not go far enough to pivot the brand from weight-loss to wellness.



Dunkin Donuts is now just Dunkin'.

Dunkin' Donuts has been a beloved doughnut institution since 1950, but people freaked out about its recent rebrand.

In September, it announced that it would change its name from Dunkin' Donuts to just name to Dunkin'. Many didn't know what to think.

Some were outraged, while others thought it was stupid. However, the main consensus seems to be that it was just unnecessary.

It has led to some hilarious Twitter reactions, though.



Celine dropped the accent from its name.

The French luxury goods brand Celine has been producing high-end clothes and accessories since 1945. Their recent decision to remove the accent from their name (formerly Céline) has been wildly unpopular among its fans.

The decision was made when new creative director Hedi Slimane took over, and were seen as a nod to Celine's '60s collections, which didn't use the accent. However, the internet remains very divided over the move. Per Who What Wear,some fans felt "shocked, angry, and betrayed."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

4 reasons big brands still matter to millennials

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Hanft projectBy Adam Hanft

Is this a nuclear winter for big brands?

I’ve read the data from the doom-mongers, but they are way off in their mortality predictions.  

True, legacy brands are being squeezed by private-label and so-called digitally native startup brands. The former is driven by price consciousness; the latter by a rising cultural consciousness that favors the new and hip.

Those threats are real and have millennial appeal. But it doesn’t mean that big brands are in a death spiral; the consumer economy has room for everyone. And I include the threat of Amazon, which has launched more than 70 private label brands. “Amazon will spend billions to kill brands,” opined one reporter. War has been declared. Legacy brands can come out winning if they leverage their considerable real and perceptual assets.

Misdiagnosing the millennial immune system

Make no mistake, millennials are not in wholesale brand-rejection mode. In fact, they are embracing “disruptive” brands like Casper in bedding; Warby Parker in eyewear; Lemonade in insurance; and of course, Airbnb.

All that makes perfect sense; millennials are essentially conformists and love incumbents — Casper is using its popularity as its brand strategy, the age-old  “We’re No.1” appeal —  they just want ones they can relate to.

Big brands can’t reinvent themselves as new, but they can and must go battle fully armed with the four inherent advantages they do have.

1. Authenticity of the highest order

Millennials crave brands with integrity, honesty, and depth. And a proud history. Big brands have it all. Most have been around for decades with authentic cultures forged over time. But they have lost their way in marketing their stories.

Private-label brands don’t have that rich authenticity; they were conceived through a whiteboard exercise.

Rather than racing to out-cool the cool kids, legacy brands should find new ways to embrace their reality.  As Adweek notes, “Millennials have made ‘yesterday’s blue collar brands today’s coolest clothes.’”

2. Consumers expect brands to give back

Today’s millennial consumer is looking for generous brands, two-thirds would rather buy from a company that gives back;  brands with a sense of purpose grow nearly twice as fast as others.

Brands from America’s greatest companies give back to society through vast philanthropic networks.

Private-label brands are not built to give back. When was the last time one of them offered a kid a scholarship or built a community garden? It’s not in their margin structure.

Once this message is unlocked, legacy brands will reap great rewards.

3. Brands are innovation engines

Consumer packaged goods companies have well-funded R&D departments and sophisticated marketing teams that can create category-driving innovation — breakthroughs that consumers are willing to pay for.

Private-label brands are fast-followers. This puts pressure on great brands to continue to earn and re-earn loyalty by continuing to invest in R&D, while building fast, nimble innovation cultures.

4. The transparency of bigness

Today’s consumers care about transparency, ethical sourcing, every link in the supply chain. Big brands are uniquely equipped to build these, and to also put stringent demands on their vendors and suppliers.

S.C. Johnson is a great example of how a branded company can maintain the highest standards, and communicate them digitally as central to its brand story.  

Being anti-brand is not a strategy

Brandless raised $240MM for a private-label brand that proudly declares its independence from brand hegemony. But according to Recode, just 20% of shoppers who placed an order on the site in the fourth quarter of 2017 placed another order a quarter later.

Trust in institutions is cratering. Big brands with depth and soul are in the best position to build it back — to every generation.

Take Kitchen Aid, a 99-year old brand which made it to the top of Millennial relevance list in one survey — coming in ahead of Google and Apple — thanks to their continual product innovation and savvy use of social media.  

Consumer packaged goods leaders should spend less time reading their own premature obituaries and more time leveraging their untapped strengths.  

The only obstacles are organizational shibboleths and pre-existing behaviors.

Adam Hanft is a brand strategist, former advertising agency founder, co-author of “Dictionary of the Future,” and a board member at Scotts Miracle-Gro, where he plays an active role as a marketing advisor to the company.  He has also worked with many category disruptors ranging from WeWork and Tinder to JetSmarter and Seeking Alpha.

This post is sponsored by Hanft Projects. | Content written and provided by Hanft Projects.

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The same thing I was bullied for in middle school became the foundation of my successful business

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  • Laura Belgray is a copywriter who charges over $1,000 a hour.
  • She's built her own successful business by being unabashedly herself — the same thing she was bullied for in middle school.
  • "In grade school, not fitting in can mean nowhere to sit in the school cafeteria," she writes. "As a brand, meanwhile, fitting in is the kiss of death. Being polished and perfect makes you boring and forgettable, and being unlike anyone else is the golden ticket."

When I was in sixth grade, my mom handed me a letter.

“It’s from a secret admirer!” she said, lingering in hopes of further information.

I waited for her to leave, then opened it. Secret admirer? I had my doubts. Boys didn’t like me.

“I’ve been watching you and have a crush on you,” the note, in telltale middle-school girl’s bubble letters, said. “Your hat is so sexy and so are your Wrangler jeans. And I love the way you walk — like a duck!”

My face turned hot. I tore the letter into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

Within one line, I knew who it was from:

My former best friend, Beth Y., and her new bestie, Beth F. —  who’d stolen Beth Y. from me on the first day of school and made my sixth grade life hell.

Read More:I earn $950 an hour writing from my couch — here are my best tips for people who want to work for themselves

We’d been Beth ‘n’ Laura. Now, they were Beth ‘n’ Beth, or — as one teacher nicknamed them, Beth Squared.

Beth F. took over my group of friends and got me kicked me out of pizza Wednesdays, when we all went to the famous V&T Pizza up by Columbia.

She stood by like a mob boss, her arms folded across her chest, while boys tossed around my green felt hat — an unfortunate fashion statement I’d brought back from camp and made a point of wearing every day as my signature “thing.”

She rolled her eyes and elbow-jabbed Beth Y. whenever I said something in class.

“You walk like a duck, Laura,” Beth F. yelled at me more than once, unleashing a torrent of unconnected accusations. “You’re a spazz. You’re so weird. You suck at gym. You don’t even have any designer jeans!”

It was true. I wasn’t graceful. I was obsessed with Archie comics and video games, not eyeshadow or General Hospital. I skipped gym whenever I could get away with it and stayed in the art room drawing “Save Water” posters on oaktag. (New York was going through a drought.) And no, I didn’t have the right jeans.

(In my defense, I’d tried on every acceptable brand. Sassoon, Calvin Klein, Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, you name it. They weren’t made for a kid with a butt, and my dad didn’t want to pay “highway robbery prices” for “dungarees” anyway.)

All in all, I was too “me” to fit in.

Luckily, life isn’t middle school. Neither is business.

In grade school, not fitting in can mean nowhere to sit in the school cafeteria.

As a brand, meanwhile, fitting in is the kiss of death ....

Being polished and perfect makes you boring and forgettable ….

And being unlike anyone else is the golden ticket.

I know this not only because of tired buzz-phrases that put a premium on being different, like “outside the box,” “disruptive marketing,” and, of course, Apple’s famous “Think different.”

But, speaking first-hand, I’ve made a lucrative business of being unapologetically me; of sticking out and being what I call “flawsome” — showing off my weirdo imperfections everywhere I can.

Between my social posts, my blog, my marketing emails, even the copywriting services page on my website, sharing those quirks and shortcomings that once got me kicked out of pizza Wednesdays is what now wins me fans, buyers, and clients.

These people know my whole deal:

They know that I sleep too late, get dark thoughts about my industry, fight old ladies for food samples at the supermarket, am a lazy procrastinator, leave the house looking like a hungover raccoon, and have a very strange way of eating a sandwich.

They know that I have a shopping problem.

They know that I hate my feet and that I love Real Housewives way too much.

They comment on my posts and write back to my emails with thanks like:

“Have you been reading my journal?”

“I’m so glad I’m not the only one.”

“You’re so different from the other businesses I get emails from.”

“This is just what I needed to read today. Thank you for being real.”

And, best of all, they follow up with, “I need to work with you.”

Being relatable and different is what sells my copywriting mini-products and courses, my writing retreat in Italy, and my $1,450/hour copywriting services. (I often have a wait list.)

In business, it’s tempting to look around at what’s working for everyone else, and do that. That website font and color scheme, that tone of voice, that feed of glorious, filtered-to-death, I’m-on-a-boat Instagram pics.

But fitting in — though it may keep the Beth F's of the world off your case and spare you from fake “admirer” mail in sixth grade — will only get you honored in the Business Hall of Same.

It’ll make you bland, generic, overlooked.  

And for us former middle school outcasts who dare to stay different, standing out is sweet revenge.

Laura Belgray, founder of Talking Shrimp, is an award-winning copywriting expert and unapologetic lazy person. She writes TV spots for clients like NBC, Fandango, and Bravo, and helps entrepreneurs and creatives get paid to be 100% themselves. Get her 5 Tips for Non-Sucky Copy here.

SEE ALSO: How I went from earning $100 per hour to over $1,000 per hour working for myself

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7 food logos and mascots that didn't age well

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chiquita bananas

  • Marketing hasn't always been spot-on when it comes to food branding, especially in today's changing social climate. 
  • Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Cream of Wheat have all received backlash for their usage of black mascots. 
  • Frito-Lays and Chiquita bananas have both been accused of using racist mascots. 

Looking at past dating advice and old Oscar-winning movies, it's easy to see that what was once deemed creative, funny, and helpful can now be viewed as racist, inappropriate, and controversial.

The same can be said for marketing choices, especially in food branding. From mascots that have been called racist to controversial ad campaigns, the marketing world has made some questionable decisions over the years. 

These are some branding decisions food companies have come under fire for. 

The Aunt Jemima mascot has changed over the years, but some still believe it has has racist connotations.

The Aunt Jemima mascot was created in the late 1800s and based off a minstrel song called "Aunt Jemima." A former slave named Nancy Green was hired to portray the character on the company's branding. Since then, the mascot has been compared to "mammy," a racist stereotype, portraying a black woman who is content with slavery. The company's mascot has since changed its appearance. 



Uncle Ben's rice is another company with history of a controversial black mascot.

Uncle Ben was first introduced in 1946 as the black face of a white company. Dressed in a bow tie and addressed as "uncle," the character evoked a servant. As the civil rights movement progressed, the company received pressure and criticism for using what seemed like a black servant to make sales. In 2007, the company rolled out a new marketing campaign which made the new mascot, Ben, the chairman of the board.



Cream of Wheat was criticized for using a specific black character.

In 1901, Cream of Wheat introduced its mascot, Rastus, a smiling, black chef. However, the terms "Rastus"has been considered an offensive term for black men, inciting backlash for the brand. In 1925, Rastus was finally taken off the Cream of Wheat packaging and replaced with Frank L. White, a black chef who can still be found on the boxes today.



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We asked a group of graphic-design experts to rate the 2020 presidential candidates' logos, and they were not impressed

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With the 2020 election already in full swing, presidential candidates have unveiled their (sometimes) shiny new logos. 

Branding has always played a huge role in politics, but it is especially important in the digital age, when people's first interactions with a candidate are often through their website or social-media presence. If a candidate's logo, slogans, colors, and messaging don't stand out in an already crowded race, it can greatly influence how far they make it and how much name recognition they gain.

In 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama's iconic "O" became the symbol his campaign ran on. This created a shift in how candidates treated their branding, which was reflected in future campaigns. In 2016, Hillary Clinton attempted to replicate this effect with an "H" that incorporated an arrow across the letter. 

According to Deroy Peraza, the principal and creative director at the Brooklyn-based design studio Hyperakt, the most successful 2020 branding will come from campaigns that "aren’t afraid to show the identity of the candidate and break with traditional norms, which in political branding are red, white and blue." 

We saw the influence of having a unique color pallete during the 2018 midterm elections, when freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made history as the youngest woman elected to Congress. She stood out from her longtime-incumbent opponent by highlighting her heritage and youthfulness with a bright yellow and purple color pallete for her logo and posters. 

Now other candidates are attempting to replicate her success. Sen. Kamala Harris, Marianne Williamson, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are all experimenting with color in their 2020 campaigns. But color is only part of the battle when it comes to branding. There are many other elements, including typeface, layout, and slogan choice that can ultimately make or break a logo.

We asked five graphic-design and branding experts to rate the 2020 campaign logos on a scale of 1 to 10, in which 1 is the worst, 5.5 is just okay, and 10 is excellent. Our panel of judges consisted of:

The following ranking of logos is based on the average score each one received from our panel.

SEE ALSO: Beto O'Rourke's logo for his 2020 presidential run is drawing comparisons to iconic Texas chain Whataburger

SEE ALSO: Here's everyone who has officially announced they are running for president in 2020

15. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee

Average score: 2.2/10

Heller: 2/10 – "Poor type choice."

Lupton: 3/10– "Whose moment? The candidate’s? The Democrats’? Who is this candidate? Who are the Democrats?"

Formosa: 3/10 – "More of a corporate logo than a personal logo, with a message 'Our moment' that says little."

Navitsky: 3/10 – "Secretly I want to give this a 10 because it’s so unexpected and weird, but ultimately it doesn’t feel like there’s a human behind it. And that seems fairly problematic."

Millman: 0/10  – No comment given.



14. Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney

Average score: 2.6/10

Heller: 4/10  – "Why not go OBAMA all the way and just use the D with the red, white and blue highway?"

Lupton: 4/10  – "An interstate highway heading to the future? No thanks. I’ll walk."

Formosa: 2/10 – "For whatever positive qualities you would hope to see embodied in a presidential candidate,  I can safely say that none of them are being communicated here."

Navitsky: 2/10– "Lots of competing elements here. I’m also not sure if this is a presidential candidate or someone who is going to be refinishing driveways."

Millman: 1/10– No comment given.

 



13. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang

Average score: 2.7/10

Heller: 4.5/10 – "Conventional, but using the flag in a somewhat clever fashion."

Lupton: 3/10 – "The flag cliché is really struggling here."

Formosa: 2/10 – "Not much to say about this red, white, and blue logo other than it looks like it’s coming from someone running for mayor of a small town. It’s not communicating anything beyond that to convince you he’s the guy you want."

Navitsky: 4/10– "Forward momentum seems like the right message to send for 2020, but this overall feels pretty safe."

Millman: 0/10 – "An abomination."

Read more about Yang's campaignhere.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Why brands are turning away from big Instagram influencers to work with people who have small followings instead

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  • Brands are increasingly moving away from working with huge influencers to promote their products.
  • Instead, they're choosing to collaborate with micro- or nano-influencers, who can have as few as 100 followers.
  • There are many reasons for this switch, but it's mainly because people with smaller followings are much more relatable and trustworthy, and their endorsements seem a lot more genuine and authentic.
  • Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

The life of an influencer can appear incredibly glamorous — who wouldn't want to spend their days posing for photos, receiving gifts from brands, and being paid to post about them on Instagram?

It's a lifestyle that appeals to many, so much so that "social-media influencer" is the second most popular career aspiration among those between the ages of 11 and 16 (second only to "doctor"), according to an Awinstudy.

With certain influencers commanding followings into the millions, securing an endorsement from one can seem like an incredibly powerful move for a brand.

However, the tide is slowly turning, and brands are increasingly seeing the benefits of working with micro- or nano-influencers — meaning it's actually possible work with your favourite brands, even if you have only a few hundred followers.

What is a micro-influencer?

The term "micro-influencer" is bandied around a lot, but what it describes exactly is up for debate.

While some people would consider anyone with 1,000 to 10,000 followers a micro-influencer, and anyone with more than that to be an influencer, others break things down more thoroughly.

Gabby Wickham and Shirley Leigh-Wood Oakes are the cofounders of the London-based brand-influence agency WickerWood, which plays the role of middleman between brands and influencers.

They divide influencers into the following categories:

  • Mega: 1 million-plus
  • Macro: 200,000 to 900,000 followers
  • Midi: 50,000 to 200,000 followers
  • Micro: 10,000 to 50,000 followers
  • Nano: 800 to 10,000 followers.

Why do brands want to work with micro-influencers?

It might seem counterintuitive for a company wanting to boost sales and increase brand awareness to choose to work with influencers with small followings, but there's actually a whole host of reasons to do so.

For starters, people with a few thousand followers generally seem more trustworthy, authentic, and relatable than those with huge followings.

Working with smaller influencers can also mean a brand's message is spread in a more natural-feeling way.

"It's really trusted and curated content," Wickham told INSIDER. "[Working with micro-influencers] is one of the strongest marketing platforms of the moment."

Read more: I went on a professional Instagram photoshoot, and the lengths influencers go to for the perfect picture will shock you

What's more, nano- and micro-influencers often allow a brand to target specific audiences — if, say, you were opening a restaurant in north London, working with micro-influencers who post about their adventures in the area would likely increase your chances of reaching others who might spend time there.

"A lot of brands prefer to work with nano- or micro-influencers because they're a lot more focussed and more targeted to their followers and audience," Leigh-Wood Oakes added.

"It means the potential engagement is a lot stronger because those influencers will be much more aware and in tune with their immediate following because they've grown them, they're still small enough for them to be able to engage well with and also potentially know on some level.

The 25-year-old London-based food blogger Nina Ricafort, for example, has 10,600 followers on her Instagram account @feastlondon.

 

Her feed is dedicated to reviews of dishes and restaurants found in central London, and she always discloses when she was invited as a guest for a complimentary meal.

"They'll be much more London-centric and locally focused because of the work they've been doing," Leigh-Wood Oakes added.

WickerWood co founders colour

Companies are seeking genuine brand fans

No matter the size of your following, and despite the inclusion of #ad, #gifted, or #spon in your caption, product endorsements on Instagram are a lot more powerful when the person doing the promoting is a genuine fan of the brand.

This is something Amber Atherton, the founder of a tool called Zyper, realized while running a jewellery e-commerce business.

"We learned our customers were our most relevant ambassadors," Atherton told INSIDER. "Tapping into fans of a brand is far more powerful than using an influencer."

amber atherton 1

This was the seed that led to her founding Zyper, which uses a secret algorithm to identify a brand's top 1% of fans and then brings the two together on projects.

"It's the idea that influencers are becoming less and less relevant, and every consumer has the power to collaborate with a brand that they love," Atherton said. "We're like a hybrid loyalty programme, it's about rewarding genuine fans as opposed to just paying people to post."

 

She believes real fans are more important than influencers because you know they genuinely like the product. 

Are big influencers losing their allure?

One of the problems with working with huge influencers is that you don't really know who you're reaching.

"With macro- and mega-influencers, it's like throwing sand at a wall," Wickham said. "It's a numbers game, rather than really curating."

What's more, the biggest influencers have become celebrities in their own right, which makes them not seem like real people any more.

"Some of these much bigger ones with half a million or a million followers, they feel a little out of touch or seem to have propelled themselves into the celebrity space," Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

"So consumers and followers start to see the dollar signs behind that, they're turning into a business, probably being paid a hell of a lot," she added.

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Even though a micro- or nano-influencers might have received something for free, they certainly won't have been paid the huge amounts mega-influencers receive for their endorsements. The general public is also becoming more savvy to how sizeable these fees can be — and it's a turnoff.

"People want authentic content, and it becomes really disingenuous if you realise someone is paid £10,0000 ($13,000) to do it," Wickham said.

Read more: Instagram influencers are hiring life coaches to help them deal with the pressures of the platform

All of these factors have contributed to a general decline in trust of big influencers, and Atherton said the data backs this up.

"Advertising is not the way to appeal to millennials and Generation Z, and influencers are very much becoming just a new form of paid media," she said.

"That lack of trust is really where we're seeing a shift to going back to this peer-to-peer grassroots level. Because at the end of the day, the most effective form of advertising is peer-to-peer referral," Atherton added. "I think the whole influencer space is a massive bubble which is going to burst."

How micro-influencers are selected

If the big influencer space has become overcrowded, there are, of course, even more potential micro- and nano-influencers on Instagram, so how do agencies and brands decide who to work with?

For WickerWood, it's a case of considering analytics but also a person's content creation — that means not only whether what you're posting has been thoughtfully created but also whether it aligns with the brand's image.

From a personal point of view, you won't be doing yourself any favours by endorsing a product that doesn't fit seamlessly into your Instagram.

"Followers are so much more savvy than they were before, and if it doesn't look real, and it doesn’t look like it is part of your world and you would endorse it, there's no point in doing it," Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

"The influencer should want to work with brands that work with their lifestyle because otherwise their followers are just going to get turned off," she added.

 

For Zyper, the exact way brand fans are identified is secret. However, Atherton said the algorithm is largely based around an analysis of a brand's customer data, your engagement with the brand, whether you're an existing customer, your aesthetic, and various other metrics.

"They have to have the right metrics to have 1% fan status," Atherton said. "That's how we confirm someone is a real brand advocate — it's obviously completely different to influencers, which just comes down to brands choosing different people who'll promote tons of different brands if they're paid."

The size of a person's following doesn't actually come into it at all, and there's no minimum number of followers you have to have to become a brand fan: "It's a completely artificial way to determine if somebody is relevant to a brand or in any way influential within their peer group," Atherton said.

"We generally don't look at that as a defining metric at all," she added.

Read more: Instagram posts encouraging eating disorders are 'spiralling out of control,' psychiatrists warn

While Zyper tends to approach the top 1% of fans on social media after identifying them, they also receive applications from people, who are often enticed by the prospect of freebies.

Since launching a year and a half ago, Zyper has had hundreds of thousands of applications from people who want to be brand fans, but the vast majority get turned down if they don't come up in the company's data deep dive.

"So if you wanted to work with Topshop, we take a deep dive and then match that up with our inbound signup list and see if those people are actually coming up in the top 1%," Atherton said. "A lot of the time they're not."

What does being a micro-influencer entail?

Working with brands on a micro- or nano-influencer scale can mean various things.

In order to maintain authenticity, it's important that you're not just doing a one-off post, but rather that you become an ambassador who is part of a campaign over months or years. 

Zyper works with brands such as Magnum, L'Oréal, and Dior, but how it works with influencers varies.

Usually, once the top 1% of fans have been identified, and they've agreed to be involved, they'll be given credit to spend on the brand in some capacity and be asked to feature it in posts a certain number of times per month (disclosing that the products were gifted).

 

Zyper's brand fans double as a focus group for the brands, too, and they're often brought together to sample new products and provide feedback on what they'd like to see.

"I think that is becoming a huge part of the value we're bringing to brands," Atherton said. "It's a very lean feedback group for insights." 

Zyper then feeds the data back to its brands: For example, if 50% of a beauty brand's fans have made Instagram posts about something matcha-related over the past three months, this might result in the brand considering bringing out a matcha line of products, or even just giving out matcha kits to fans as a reward.

How to make yourself more attractive to brands

So you've got a small but engaged following on Instagram and want to get a slice of the micro-influencer action — how do you go about it?

Ultimately, you need to wait for a brand or agency to come to you, but there are certain ways you can increase your chances of this happening, Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

1. Understand yourself as a brand

Ask yourself: What's your ethos as a social-media influencer? What do you want to tell your followers? What lifestyle are your trying to promote? Make sure this comes across strongly through your posts.

2. Be real

"A lot of brands are starting to work a lot less with influencers who Photoshop too much, use loads of filters, and give off this idea that life is perfect and wonderful, and there's not a pimple or a dimple in sight — it's not real life," Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

"So I would definitely suggest an influencer make sure they are really showing real life. Yes, it can be curated and tailored, but you have a responsibility, and that's very key," she added.

 

Read more: Disappointing, behind-the-scenes photos show what it's really like to be an Instagram influencer

3. Put effort into your content

It helps to show enthusiasm for the brand and show that you care about what you're producing.

"We love it when we see an influencer get really involved, be enthusiastic, and have lots of ideas and creative input," Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

4. Know your audience

If you want your audience to engage with you, you need to engage with them, and this is how you'll get to know them.

"Really understanding and being OK with having a small audience following is crucial," Leigh-Wood Oakes said.

You just need to demonstrate you know how to engage that audience successfully. 

SEE ALSO: A photographer asked teenagers to edit their photos until they thought they looked 'social media ready,' and the results are shocking

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's why McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sales skyrocket in March

Burger King's CMO explains why the chain's uniforms look like its most famous menu item

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Fernando Machado Burger King CMO conference

  • Burger King's colorful striped uniforms are part of a branding overhaul launched in 2014 by CMO Fernando Machado.
  • The idea for the Whopper-inspired branding came from a single "E" in the Whopper logo, which was where the stripes first appeared.
  • The Whopper uniforms are Burger King's first uniform design to be standardized around the world, and they were created to visually differentiate the chain from its competitors, Machado said.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Burger King went through a rough patch in the early 2000s.

It struggled with criticism and legal troubles regarding the nutrition content of its food. Younger, flashier burger chains like Five Guys and Smashburger were growing in popularity, and franchisees often revolted against the corporation behind the brand.

The brand's look was outdated, too.

Burger King's CMO, Fernando Machado, described the chain's old uniforms as "very, very generic" in a recent interview with Business Insider. The uniforms weren't standardized across the world, but most US Burger King franchises featured monochromatic polyester polo shirts, which Machado said were "not the most comfortable, to be honest."

Machado came on as Burger King's CMO in 2014, and since then, the chain has relaunched its aesthetic and brand.

"In the past five years, we got the brand together. And now, we have one global uniform," he said. 

Read More:These vintage photos of Burger King's uniforms show how much the chain's look has changed over time — along with its identity

The chain's latest uniform, which is a charcoal gray T-shirt with stripes meant to mimic a Whopper's ingredients, was part of a larger brand transformation that started when Machado joined the company. 

"If you stop someone on the street and ask them about Burger King, what's the first thing that comes to mind? The Whopper. So having the Whopper represented in our visual identity is really important," Machado said. 

2015 Burger King uniform hoodie

The stripes on the shirt represent a bottom bun, meat patty, tomato, and lettuce, while the charcoal gray is a nod to the brand's "heritage in flame-grilling," according to Machado.

The idea to center the brand's new look around the Whopper came from a logo redesign for the sandwich. The Whopper stripes first appeared in the "E" in "Whopper," but Machado soon realized that they could be used not just on the Whopper wrapper, but on takeaway bags, restaurant walls, and employee uniforms.

Machado's team surveyed both customers and workers on how the uniforms looked and felt.

"We want our workers to be proud to wear the uniform," said Machado. "I wouldn't design something that we wouldn't wear ourselves."

The new uniforms were made from a cotton-polyester blend that Machado says maximizes comfort, durability, and stain resistance as well as look.

"We felt that the Whopper stripes could be highly differentiating. If I compare our uniform — which we did — with the uniform of other restaurant brands, ours is very, very iconic," he said.

"People identify the Whopper stripes with Burger King, which I think speaks for itself about our design."

Read more: The 25 most innovative CMOs in the world in 2019

Burger King

Now, the Whopper stripes uniform is ubiquitous at Burger King restaurants around the globe. The full employee uniform line includes hats, hoodies, and aprons as well as the everyday T-shirt that most crew members wear on a daily basis. The goal is to inspire pride in Burger King's workers. 

Machado himself wears the uniform often, including to conferences, press events, and the office. And he's not the only one.

"There's always someone wearing the uniform in the office," he said.

"People are proud to wear those colors."

SEE ALSO: The new CEO behind Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons reveals his plans for the future of the chains

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: McDonald's just introduced the US to its most popular international menu items. Here are the ones you should order and avoid.

From the Amazon arrow to the Starbucks mermaid, here are the 15 most drastic logo changes in branding history

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apple logos

  • Most logos change little by little, but some logos undergo huge transformations.
  • There are logos that have been deliberately untouched, like Coca-Cola's.
  • Then there are brands that have constantly changed their look, from Pepsi to Microsoft Windows to Starbucks.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Most logo changes by big brands are subtle.

Think Coca-Cola — since the 1880s, its logo design has barely evolved. The Coca-Cola logo is ubiquitous and consistent, and it pays off: Coca-Cola is widely regarded as the most recognized brand worldwide.

Some, however, are so drastic that they look as if they've been created for completely different companies.

It can be risky to redesign a major logo, but many big brands are still willing to take the plunge. It doesn't always end well. Clothing retailer Gap, for example, changed its logo in 2010, then reverted back to the old design just days after serious customer backlash.

Here are the most drastic logo redesigns in brand history.

SEE ALSO: The best and worst Easter eggs and hidden meanings in 20 company logos

IBM

When it came to design, the latter half of the 20th century marked a time of simplification. IBM's logo evolution reflects this trend — its current design dates back to 1972. It's meant to evoke "speed and dynamism," according to IBM's website.



Pepsi

Pepsi represents the path that many brands have taken — phasing out lettering entirely until all that remains in a logo is the symbol itself.

Pepsi's first logo is illustrative of the design emphasis of the late 19th century. The more intricate a design, the better. In 1962, Pepsi introduced its sans serif logo that eventually inspired its current redesign.



Volkswagen

Adolf Hitler is often credited for designing an early version of the iconic VW Beetle. The pre-WWII logo for the car manufacturer bears Hitler's influence as well, a swastika-like symbol clearly outlining the letters.

VW dropped the shape in 1939 for a cleaner design that resembled teeth on a gear. That design eventually became today's button-like logo. The blue color wasn't added until 1967, and Volkswagen has barely changed its look since.



Amazon

Amazon's original logo attempted to incorporate a river into the letter "A," but only succeeded in making a shape that looks like neither.

"That river would have never conveyed a personality," Claudine Jaenichen, an information design professor at Chapman University, told Marketplace.

Today's logo is more legible, and even includes an Easter egg— the arrow points from "A" to "z" to illustrate that the e-commerce giant has everything consumers need.



Windows

Microsoft has changed its Windows operating system logo about as often as they've issued new versions of it. One of the first versions was Windows NT 3.5x, released in 1994 (pictured above).

Rather than undergoing one drastic logo change, Windows went through several, which culminated in the ultra-minimalist 2012 design for Windows 8.



Starbucks

The Starbucks logo went through some small but deliberate changes over 40 years to get to its present state.

According to the Starbucks website, the seafaring theme was based on a Norse woodcut of a siren spreading her tails. Over time, Starbucks covered up the siren's breasts, then her tail, then did away with all wording in the logo in 2011.



Audi

Granted, Audiwerke was only one of four companies that came to make up the Audi we know today. But given that it's the namesake of the current company, its logo stands in stark contrast to the minimalist ring design, which was first introduced in 1932 and brought back in 1985.



American Airlines

The original American Airlines logo featured an eagle flying between the company's initials. American Airlines unveiled its current logo in 2013, after a merger with US Airways.

The change came after 45 years of its previous logo, a straight-edge version of its iconic eagle placed above two Helvetica "A"s.



FedEx

In 1994, FedEx was in need of a rebranding. They shortened the company name from Federal Express, and at the same time changed their logo, which features a hidden arrow within the "Ex." 

The new logo's designer, Lindon Leader, was immediately celebrated for the award-winning design.



Apple

Apple's original logo, co-designed by Steve Jobs, depicted Sir Isaac Newton seconds away from revelation. It was complex to the point of being hard to look at, hence a quick switch, in 1976, to the rainbow apple, which has barely changed since.



Shell

Royal Dutch Shell's logo hasn't changed in substance over time, but there are miles between today's design and the original.

In 1941, Shell introduced its red and yellow color scheme mainly for their gas stations, which were meant to attract drivers' eyes on the road. Its current logo dates back to 1999.



Nokia

Nokia's first logo dates back to the company's origins as a Finnish industrial powerhouse. However, as times changed, Nokia's logo needed to modernize. It went through a number of changes, including a red triangle with small red lettering, and a black ring with white lettering.

The bold blue letters in today's logo weren't introduced until 1998.



Fiat

Fiat's bold logo evolution has been marked by many drastic redesigns. The original 1898 logo gave way to a bolder, clearer image with "FIAT" printed in gold. In the 1990s, however, the letters were scrapped in favor of diagonal stripes.

Today's logo is remarkably similar to the one Fiat used from 1959 to 1965.



Mazda

Mazda's original logo, like Pepsi's, is letter-oriented. The switch to the "M" logo occurred in 1997, after Mazda tried three different symbols before it. Each one was completely different from the last, but in the last two decades, Mazda has kept its look constant.



Kodak

Compared with its contemporaries, Kodak's earliest logo design was ahead of its time, due to its clean lines and sans serif lettering.

In 1935, Kodak introduced its red and yellow color scheme, and hasn't deviated from it since, despite a number of rebrandings.

Dominic Green contributed to a earlier version of this post.



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