FROM THE EDITORS
If you haven’t heard, Burger King has a brand new logo. It’s flat and trendy and simple. It gets rid of the shiny burger buns, the 3D-ish design, the blue swish.
While driving down 1–95 this weekend, I saw quite a few highway exit signs with the old logo, and all I could think was, oh, no, there’s another sign they’ll have to update eventually. But other than that, I haven’t thought about Burger King much — will their new logo will work some rebranding magic to change that?
Possibly, argues Stephen Moore in Burger King’s New Logo Reveals Why Brands Are Obsessed With ‘Flat Design’ for Marker. He writes: “Burger King has just dropped a perfect example of this design-led strategy, allowing the company to flatten its image so it can update its brand without losing the essence of its original aesthetic.” …
Weekly highlights (January 11–15, 2021)
Hey y’all,
My favorite stories this week are about Mahjong tiles and the popular board game Wingspan, about why you shouldn’t call PR work “spin”, how Airbnb might be the next Groupon, death and social media, and finding the perfect podcast guest.
Interesting marketing case studies to learn from: Febreze and the “Cat Lady Effect”, used furniture and the “IKEA Effect”, Target’s too-smart marketing, being Glossier chic, Nike as a lifestyle brand, the Sonic movie, a Skittles musical, and more Nike.
We’ve also got our first Featured Writer section this week. …
FROM THE EDITOR
How to write about your own company, product, or success story — without being sneaky or 🙄 self-promotional
We’ve all had this experience: You click on an article with an interesting headline. It describes a problem that you connect with, and the author suggests a product they like as a solution to your problem. Cool, seems helpful, you think. The next section of the article mentions the product again… and again. Gosh, they really like this product, you muse. Wait, are they getting paid to write this? The end of the article turns sales-y, asking you to sign up today or start your free trial. …
More quiet, less noise
Dear Better Marketing readers,
It seems strange and perhaps insensitive to be sitting down to write a newsletter about marketing amidst the backdrop of this week’s political upheaval in the United States. As Jayde I. Powell wrote in her article This is Not a Marketing Moment in Adweek, “As marketers, we tend to get very caught up in what we want our audience to see and what we think they want to hear… If you’re unsure how to show up, just be quiet.”
I agree with Powell’s point (and also — hasn’t this entire pandemic-time, this whole year, or past four years, or, uh, the entire history of America, been full of trauma and chaos that should warrant more pause and less noise?). But we published some really interesting and insightful articles this week, and I feel an obligation to the authors, who put so much thought and energy into publishing them — I would hate to miss the chance to shine a spotlight on their writing here. …
FROM THE EDITOR
According to the internet-romance experts, the first Sunday of the new year is “Dating Sunday”, the busiest day for online dating. (I think “Swiping Sunday” is a little catchier, but so it goes.) With relationship-related New Year’s resolutions at play, some extend this trend through the month of January.
The competition between dating apps means more ads — like the “Devil Met His Match” commercials from match.com, which are aggressively running on my binge-watch of The Bold Type right now.
Why are these ads so clever? Writes professor and business consultant David Wyld,
“The devil dating a woman named ‘2020' and finding love in all the chaos may just be the perfect metaphor to remember this year gone by.” …
Hey y’all,
In this issue, we’ve got articles about mindfulness and marketing, a bunch of 2021 predictions and trends, and an explanation of why you’re so obsessed with getting 10,000 steps in every day.
We launched the Better Marketing Slack Community last week, and it’s been fun to engage in conversations about newsletter platforms, Medium design, gender in marketing campaigns, and more. If you’re interested in connecting with other Better Marketing readers, come join us!
Featured Articles
FROM THE EDITOR
Aka an answer to the question “What will your copy editors do with my article?”
At Better Humans, Better Marketing, and Better Programming, each article goes through a copy edit before it’s published. Not all Medium publications have a copy editing step in their process, but this extra step ensures an extra level of quality and consistency for our readers.
And at least once or twice a week, I get this question from writers:
“What will your copy editors do with my article?”
This article is our attempt to answer that question! We’ve also included a Q&A with a few of our copy editors (partially inspired by this article from the Creator’s Hub, Grammar Mistakes That Medium’s Copy Editors Really Don’t Want You to Make, which is an excellent read). …
This week: monoliths, MLMs, Moleskines, and marketing mistakes
An announcement: Join us on Slack!
We launched a Slack community for Better Marketing this week. If you’re interested in connecting with other folks who work in the marketing industry, we’d love to have you join us! Read more about the launch, and why we think a Slack group is a strong next step for Better Marketing, in this post.
🟨 Things I highlighted from Better Marketing this week
“So far, no credible source has suggested the structures are a product of alien technology or supernatural influence. Even Google Trends data suggests global search interest in “monolith” has shot up since the structures were found. However, here are a few conspiracy theories making the rounds.”
Why Monoliths in the Middle of Nowhere Won Marketing This Year by Nitish Menon has a timeline for the shiny metal monolith phenomenon, and how some brands have played with this weird and very 2020 occurrence. …
FROM THE EDITOR
Become a member to connect with other marketing-people, learn new things, and make better creative work
TL;DR version: We’re creating a Slack community for Better Marketing. We’d love to have you. Fill out this form for an invite! Dear Better Marketing readers and writers,
Creative, talented people with expertise in marketing are everywhere, but sometimes that community can be hard to access — especially if you work in a smaller organization or a more entrepreneurial endeavor, where you might not have a full marketing team to bounce ideas around with. …
Paddington, puppies, philanthropy, & paint-mixing
🟨 Things I highlighted from Better Marketing this week
“‘This is horrible. Absolutely not okay. No. No no. Paddington is a nice boy!!’”
The Rise & Fall of Evil Paddington by Alex Mell-Taylor looks at the strange and short-lived world of Twitter parody accounts, and whether it’s a missed opportunity when marketers ignore them. (See also: How Wendy’s Revolutionized Corporate Social Media Accounts)
“Sia will most definitely be praised for her film that reduces people on the spectrum to inspiration material, while the ASD community is spoken over yet again. She will be forgiven by her fanbase, and people with ASD’s opinions as well as the radical hate we received that day, will all be forgotten — despite it showing a strong case of ableism. …
About
