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True Stories: Blog

Brand Marketing: Is Everything You Ever Learned Wrong?

Here’s a distressing thought: New research might suggest that everything you ever learned about brand marketing was wrong. Okay, saying everything you learned is invalid might be an exaggeration, but there are several recent studies coming to light that suggest the old brand identity model popularized by David Aaker several years ago just doesn’t work in most product categories.  Yes, you read that right – new findings suggest that most of the advice first popularized in Aaker’s blockbuster book, Building Strong Brands, is fundamentally useless to marketing managers.  Moreover, these same findings suggest that the wisdom of “The Aaker Model” didn’t simply fade...

bad data

Catch More Bad Data with Advanced Approaches

For the past 20 years, the Internet has provided researchers with tools to quickly and efficiently obtain data for marketers. Customarily professional researchers, who have used a variety of tactics to spot and remove bad data, have taken on the monitoring of online data quality. Now, with the advent of easy-to-use survey software, some brands are beginning to bring their research in-house. This means that they have to shoulder the responsibility of identifying and removing bad data and dishonest responses—a critical responsibility they too often overlook. This becomes even more critical as more and more dishonest respondents are becoming experts at cheating and...

From Rockets to Research: Brandware’s Tyler Sartin

Vice President Tyler Sartin is not your average researcher. He could just as easily help you go to space as he could help you develop a marketing strategy for your new product. As a leader on the Brandware research team, he helps manage projects across numerous sectors, including: financial services, packaged goods, pharmaceutical, building products and professional services, among others. An engineer by training, Tyler is well-versed in many technical disciplines related to IT solutions, data modeling, application programming and asset management. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Brandware...

media relations

Media Pitches 101: Five Tips for Engaging with the Media

At Brandware, we are in the business of storytelling and, as such, we never stop hunting for the next media opportunity. But, to tell the world about your client’s great story, you need to know how to create effective media pitches. Here are five tips on how to engage with the media to make sure your next scoop is picked up. 1. Personalized Media Pitches Personalize your pitches to the journalists you’re contacting. Make sure your story aligns with the beat they cover, and that the outlet is a good fit. 2. Be a Resource You obviously want to be a resource for the...

Why My Internship with Brandware Was the Best Thing I Did During My College Career

By: Will Popiel As an intern at Brandware for three months, I was fortunate to get a candid look at what a career in public relations is really like. Every day presented me with a new challenge or opportunity to learn. And, now as I leave with new skills, insights, and confidence for my next step as a professional. Here are my key takeaways from my internship experience. What I learned To have a successful career in public relations, it’s crucial to have a diverse skillset rather than a specialized skillset in the digital age. Services provided can vary greatly from client to...

Five Tips to Optimize Your Work Day

At Brandware, we’re no strangers to heavy workloads, busy schedules, and ever-changing priorities. Having a demanding job can take a toll on your physical and mental health, but we believe it’s important to work smarter, not harder. Last week, we attended a PRSA seminar led by Jennifer Grizzle, and we learned some great tools for managing your work life.  Here are some of our favorite takeaways that can help any professional reduce stress, organize workloads and improve efficiency.  1. Planning   One of the best ways to make a seemingly overwhelming schedule more manageable is to be more proactive with business planning. Begin each week...

Search Engine Marketing: Methods and Mistakes

With a world of information at our fingertips in this day and age, it’s unlikely people will stumble across your website by accident. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become a necessary means to drive traffic to your site. While it’s not an exact science, there are rules you can follow that give you the best chance of getting the clicks that matter. Here are best practices from SEO expert, Brodie Schroeder, to use when employing a SEM strategy. When might you want to use a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) approach over an organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy? It depends on your goal. For a longer sales process, you want to educate your...

Facebook’s Ad Relevance Score is Going Away: What You Need to Know

Facebook recently announced a significant change to their advertising insights platform that could help brands and agencies optimize their ads more effectively. As of April 30, 2019, the Relevance Score will be replaced by three new metrics: Quality Ranking, Engagement Rate Ranking and Conversion Rate Ranking. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into what’s changing and what it means for your Facebook and Instagram advertising strategy and tactics. What is a Relevance Score? For those unfamiliar with Relevance Score, the outgoing metric is a 1-10 score assigned to ads. The score gives advertisers a sense of whether or not their...

Facebook Ad Metrics Are Changing – What You Need to Know

Facebook developers work hard to ensure the platform operates effectively for marketers. This results in constant updates to the platform. Regular social media users only see these updates once or twice a year. Social media managers and brand managers, however, must juggle these updates nearly every month. From changing algorithms, updates to targeting, analytics updates or new offerings, Facebook is rarely the same from month to month. We know it’s hard to keep up with, so we’ve detailed the most recent update below: 1. Some metrics are disappearing from your dashboard Facebook has updated its platform several times over the past few...

Communications in the Changing World of Social Activism

The traditional perspective in the business world is for corporations, big and small, to keep their head down and mind their own business. Companies should not have an opinion on matters outside of their business category and should certainly stay out of political debates. However, trending hashtag activism is forcing a change in the status quo. Organizations can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines while consumers choose brands that share their values and support their causes. Companies should not fear the changing of the guard, but rather embrace the shift in perspective. These social issues are complex and sensitive,...