In our research we’ve found a strong link between the positive impact a brand has on people’s lives and brand performance. So, to help you consider markets in human terms, here are seven essential elements of market anatomy:

1. Bellies
The most fundamental thing that people seek in consumption is basic nourishment. While countless brands—from your local farmer’s market to Whole Foods to the Wal-Marts and PepsiCos of the world—aim specifically to keep people’s bellies satisfied, there’s almost always an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives by making a difference in their bellies. Swedish meatball, anyone?

2. Skin
Skin offers protection from the environment, but people need more safety and security. How can your brand fortify these feelings? Financial products promise such peace of mind; but after years of violating the market’s (read “people’s”) trust, fortification has become a laceration. While generally we have observed a strong correlation between the positive impact a brand has on people’s lives and brand monetary value, among financial-services brands, brand monetary value far outpaces the good those brands have done for their clients. No wonder the wounded market reacted so viscerally to Greg Smith’s public resignation from Goldman Sachs. But the need for security hasn’t gone away, and smart brands like Wal-Mart and Hyundai have stepped up, providing a valuable safety net in tough economic times.

3. Ears and Mouths
Humans are social animals; and marketing can be a powerful conduit for people’s relationships. Social networks like Facebook and service businesses like McDonald’s give people a place to connect, but so do less obvious brands. Though Microsoft is sometimes berated as a lumbering giant, we’ve found it to be among the front of the pack here, with V-Positive respondents consistently ranking it among the top 10 brands that satisfy their social needs. Just look at what they’ve built with their Xbox community.

4. Muscles
People want to puff their chests out a little bit and feel good about themselves. Marketers can help them. Infomercial marketer Beachbody has busted that genre by literally helping people puff out their chests, sweeping Capitol Hill in the process, while on the other end of the spectrum, wine connoisseurs, foodies, fashionistas and the like find confidence in their product expertise, a mutually beneficial way for marketers of any type to help people feel good about themselves.

5. Eyes
Can you help people realize their ideal vision of themselves? In our research we’ve found technology brands to perform well here because they are instrumental in people’s goal pursuits in all areas of their lives. Take Google: Want to learn how to run faster? Google it. Perform better at your job? Google it. Play guitar like a badass? Google it. Non-technology brands have succeeded here too. Campbell’s, for example, saw an uptick in helping consumers at the outset of the new year, when many were trying to idealize their diets, using soup as a tool, or the tool, in their arsenal. The unifying theme between Google and Campbell’s is that both are instruments for people’s achievements.

6. Brains
Sometimes people just want to unplug and take a break from goals, relationships and so on. This is a nice idea…that brains hate. People have a need to keep their brains focused, even when they’re trying to relax. Aimlessly browsing the web doesn’t help, but books and casual games do. In this light the move toward experiential marketing approaches is a positive one. The “gamification” of brands—like Red Bull’s Kart Fighter racing game—is good for people, as is the immersive take on retail. In V-Positive, Apple rates among the best brands in delivering engaging experiences; Apple keeps its retail customers engaged and earns a just reward in the process.

7. Hearts
People live for the moments that touch their hearts and make them truly happy, ephemeral and fleeting though those moments may be. Nowhere is the personal perspective on markets more important than here. Google has hit the nail on the head several times in its “Search Stories” videos; c’mon, you didn’t even come close to shedding a tear at the end of “Parisian Love”? At the same time, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s have both been successful at showing how they can provide a moment of levity in an otherwise ordinary or stressful day. Happiness doesn’t have to be the only thing on offer, but adding a little slice of it in people’s lives can go a long way. In V-Positive consumers consistently rate Google, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s among the top 10 happiness-inducing brands, ratings that are in step with these brands’ impressive financial valuations.

So remember the human qualities of your market. By connecting with customers on human terms, everyone stands to gain.

By Luke Kachersky, Ph.D. and Dawn Lerman, Ph.D.  Kachersky and  Lerman are, respectively, project coordinator and director of The Center for Positive Marketing at Fordham University, and are faculty members of the university’s Schools of Business.

Contact them at luke.kachersky@centerforpositivemarketing.org and dawn.lerman@centerforpositivemarketing.org

Follow them on Twitter @PositiveMktg and @kachersky

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Communication is no longer about just businesses talking to anyone; it’s about people talking to people. Forget who’s on the end of the conversation. This is about where it all starts. The future of communications is C2C, or consumer2consumer or people2people.

Individuals, whether buying for business or themselves, are talking to and listening to other consumers. They are setting the agenda, leading the conversation, sharing their views, recommending the best products and deciding whether brands are successful or not.

No longer are consumers just taking in information corporations and brands are spewing at them. Now they question and make brands earn their loyalty. Because of social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, consumers are now quick to ask brands: What can you do for me?

Case in point: Take the fatal example of Netflix. When Netflix raised prices last summer, customers became infuriated, took to their blogs and Twitter accounts, and raised hell. Netflix was humiliated and has yet to fully recover from the CRM crisis that has plagued it ever since. Instead of being accountable to its customers, Netflix let Facebook comments go unanswered, and the company’s president responded with an answer about profits rather than speak to its customers directly in a level manner. Millions of customers felt betrayed and gave Netflix quite a scare by cutting service, resulting in its stock prices taking a 60 percent nosedive.

So, our challenge is getting people talking about brands in a positive way, not getting brands to talk to people. With so many touch points, brands must move away from the traditional 1960s formula of one-sided information and start having conversations with consumers. Consumers want brands to be authentic and have a real human voice they can speak with when something goes wrong (or right).

Advertisers are in complete denial if they think they can continue with the same tired, one-sided formula. Brands need to have authentic conversations with consumers if they want to survive. Consumers are talking to each other, so why aren’t brands following?

Fiona Menzies is managing director at gyro Dubai.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

It’s pretty scary…the stuff of nightmares. Many have attributed the popularity of zombies in our culture to not-so-latent fears about the economy or terrorism, suggesting that these ghouls symbolize a loss of control. It also has been suggested that we see ourselves in these mindless creatures for how quickly our appetites run amok.

I see it as a metaphor for the effect that social media is having on more and more of us every day. No longer able to process information, we rip through new media, biting and chewing and spitting out content, barely digesting any of it. Ravenously we move on to the next. Indeed, barely chewed facts, items and stories pass through us onto the web like offal. Our constant tweets and updates are mere bits and pieces, carrying links like so many worms, each containing the shred of something devoured earlier. Or something like that.

I myself am turning. Last night I tried reading an article in a magazine. I found myself jumping over paragraphs, skipping entire chunks, gluttonous. Unsatisfied, I started another article. Then another. Within minutes I was in front of my laptop lapping up more, more and more! Already an addictive personality, once I taste blood, I cannot stop gorging. The more I feast, the less I retain. A vicious cycle if ever there was one.

Advertising was a major precursor to all this. Having to manage narrative and sell strategy in 30 seconds or less, we in the ad business all become conditioned to making and receiving short-form content. “Nobody reads body copy!”

Implied is the notion that we are no longer doing a good job at listening and learning. On the other hand, maybe we’re doing a terrific job. Remember the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speed-reading program? Zipping through pages was considered a great gift, almost magical.

As a species we’ve adapted to a world of streaming content, chewing through it more and more urgently. More channels. More screens. More friends. More, more, more! We are content zombies!

Because, as one of the remaining mortals exclaims during George A. Romero’s remake of his own classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead, “We are them.”

Obviously, then, creating meaningful content (stuff that gets digested) is extremely difficult. Yet, when we do manage to create humanly relevant ideas, it’s ever so satisfying. Like a shot to the brain!

Steffan Postaer is Executive Creative Director of gyro San Francisco

Follow him @Steffan1

He blogs regularly at Gods of Advertising.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

As every b2b agency will know, the Internet’s innate sharabilility is returning us to a community-focused society that cherishes “we” over “me”. This networked economy affects contemporary marketing hugely. With people more open to building closer connections with brands than ever before, brands must be more human and open to co-creation of the marketing messaging and the product simultaneously with their customers to put the aforementioned honesty into practice. Tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of people around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking, producer- versus-consumer innovation model so common to corporations around the world. And there are many a b2b agency out there still following in this vein.

Brands need to go beyond loyalty to establish mutually beneficial networks to give customers what they want; otherwise the Internet will allow them to find another route to get what they want. After all, customers are becoming competitors and brands are better off “employing” them by pulling them into their network. Brands are sitting on a bed of emotional human beings eager to be a part of brand creation.

In 1926, Henry Ford instituted a controversial shift change at his growing automotive empire: the weekend. To the ire of many other manufacturers, Ford closed shop on Saturdays, giving his workers the new-fangled ritual of two days off a week. His move was the high point of a short-lived historic experiment. Remember the weekend, when men and women valiantly tried to keep work and home separate, equal and unadulterated?

Now, of course, we work anywhere, and most of the time. Work is in our pocket, spilling into homes, weekends, vacations and bedrooms. Nearly 40 percent of mobile workers with PDAs now wake up at night at times to check them, at least occasionally, according to a quarterly survey of mobile enterprise workers by iPass.

Does this blurring of boundaries signify an easy return to a pre-industrial past, when we lived over the store or on the farm? Are we sliding seamlessly back into integrated lives? No. For most of human history, work and home were blended due to the restriction of experience. Geographic distance and the rhythms of sun and season limited the circumference of our work and home lives. Trade, like war, ceased at sunset. Entire lives centered on the same corner of earth.

Today we multitask in nanoseconds on a global scale, moving restlessly in thought and body across the planet. Forty percent of offices lie vacant on any given day, according to Deloitte. Bankers shift their hours to the midnight darkness of each monetary mess. We rarely speak of anything being “too far away” anymore. “Long weeks within a single community are unusual; a full day within a single neighborhood is becoming rare,” writes sociologist Kenneth Gergen in The Saturated Self. The @Work State of Mind arises from an expansion of experience.

What is the impact of these extraordinary changes? Surely, we are light-footed and nimble-minded. And yet always-on work forces us to constantly negotiate what we are doing, individually and collectively. Who changes the diaper when both spouses return from work exhausted? How do you sync a team spread across six time zones and three alternative work arrangements? Throughout the day, the average worker switches tasks on average every three minutes; half the time, they are interrupting themselves, according to studies by Gloria Mark, a professor of Informatics at the University of California Irvine. Perhaps this is why the @Work study reveals that among today’s decision-makers, a sense of accomplishment correlates with an ability to separate work and personal life. Without at least a few borderlines, we cannot find terra firma in an unshackled world.

A constant negotiation of attention is our foremost challenge. At heart, paying attention well is a matter of judicious boundary making. Focus, or “orienting” in science parlance, is akin to a spotlight of the mind, allowing us to filter what’s secondary and go deep into thought. Awareness opens our sensory floodgates, making us sensitive to our wider surroundings. Finally, executive attention fuels our abilities to plan, prioritize and weigh conflicting data. Attention isn’t singular, scientists are now discovering. It’s a multifaceted skill set that is a secret to thriving in an always-on era. How we attend shapes how we rest, play, create, manage, communicate and love.

Hopping from task to task, juggling interruptions, layering time is our default work style, although research conclusively shows that we cannot multitask very well. Beyond simple tasks such as folding laundry and watching television, we are often slow, prone to error and intellectually half-asleep when we multitask. And those who do it the most tend to do it most poorly, according to a 2009 study by Stanford University scientist Clifford Nass. The habit trains them to be “suckers for irrelevancy,” says Nass. Skimming, surfing, task switching are crucial “literacies” of this new age. But they must be balanced by time for deep focus, analysis, reflection and—dare I say it? —calm. @Work needn’t be a monotone state of mind.

Remember the weekend? It varied the pace of life, placing a boundary around something worthwhile. Put in place to protect people from the burden of never-ending work, over time the weekend, nevertheless, came to exemplify the rigidity of the boundary-centric Industrial Age. Now liberated from the confines of space and time, will we be remembered by future generations as the people who forgot the art of the limit?

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning columnist and author of Distracted

In the summer of 2010, gyro, a global B2C and B2B ideas shop, assembled a group at Hyper Island, the world-famous digital training center in Karlskrone, Sweden, for what we call the gyro Academy, an intense professional development program for our up-and-comer colleagues. We exposed these students to our techniques and tools for ideation and collaboration. The group was asked to select a challenge against which they could practice these tools. They chose “work-life balance.”

Alas, I am not among our youngest colleagues. So, when I came to the session as a mentor, I was gruff and dismissive. “Quit whining! People have been complaining to me for 30 years about the long and daunting hours of the ad agency business. Do you want a job, or do you want a career? This is no business for clock-watchers. It’s a fact of life in the agency business. There’s nothing new about this work-life balance issue,” I said.

Then one of them said, “Oh, yes, there is,” and she reached in her jeans pocket and set her iPhone on the table. “This has changed. It’s attached to me. I cannot disconnect from it.”

It was for us a moment of epiphany; of sudden revelation and insight. It was not as if we had been oblivious to the spread of networked communications and handheld devices, or even how important it was to deliver new forms of communication to reach people with these media. But as people engaged in perfecting marketing communications, it struck us like a lightning bolt.

Work has changed—and people at work have changed profoundly.

Oh, we had understood for many years that it was technically easier than ever to identify targets, locate them, reach them, engage them and transact with them; even to spur them to exchange messages among themselves. We understood clearly how technology had changed, but we confess we neglected just how much it had changed them: the people to whom we were marketing.

Being at work is a state of mind; no longer a place or even a fixed period of the day.

The Internet, mobile telecom, social networking and a 24/7 global economy have eliminated the boundaries of time and space that once defined the workplace. Technology has caused work to expand to longer hours of the day and has attached work to people wherever they are.

Productivity-enhancing technology has not served to increase the amount of leisure time we enjoy—quite the contrary. It’s caused work to spill over its banks, flooding more hours of the day and more days of the week—curiously, as a matter of people’s own behavior and choices. Work goes home. Home goes to work. People are constantly toggling between working and “home-ing,”making decisions, personal and professional, at all hours of the day. They master time, rather than the other way around.

People in an @Work State of Mind today are exposed to a constant, multi-point flow of communications from not just customers, suppliers and co-workers, but also from family, friends, would-be friends and network members. They are not only engaged in considering brand messages while at work, but also championing them to their social networks. People in the @Work State of Mind represent a powerful theater for brand communications; perhaps the most powerful. They exert double purchasing power on both their own needs and those of their companies.

Their eyes are on screens: small, medium and large.

They are already in engagement mode.

They are considering solutions carefully.

They are making decisions.

And this @Work State of Mind is a shared state of mind. People today are connected to and communicating with others in the same state of mind. This makes them a switching station of enthusiasm and endorsement channeled toward decision makers and influencers, immediately.

Mining opportunity from the rich vein of the @Work State of Mind requires new methods and models. The model must be much more real-time, agile and even uncontrolled.

It is an approach that must be anchored in anthropology and behavioral science, relying more heavily than ever on understanding human-scale motives and at striking responsive chords of emotion—particularly if people are to be compelled to act and advocate spontaneously on a brand’s behalf.

Mastering the @Work State of Mind promises breakthrough success for marketers, exchanging the mediocre performance of conventional methods for the high performance of programs radically reset to the way people really live, work, dream and prosper.

Gyro is delighted to have at its disposal the amazing resources of Forbes Insights in the ongoing investigation of this profoundly important area of inquiry. This report is but the first of several products to emanate from “The @Work State of Mind Project,” a collaborative marketing R&D project led by gyro that includes participants from business, government, the arts, healthcare, NGOs, academia and entertainment. If you have an interest in sharing in this discovery, we hope you will join us.

Follow Rick on Twitter at @MrBtoB

To read more about the @Work State of Mind, here are two related articles: Who Has Control Over Your Time? and The Boardroom has Been Replaced by the Kitchen Table.

We know executives are busy. That’s not news. But, we didn’t know how and where decision-makers are receiving information. How is it influencing their decisions, and how do they feel about it?

If you are a brand looking to communicate with these people, these are the questions that you need answered. These are insights that are necessary to be humanly relevant in an age of constant information.

That’s why gyro partnered with Forbes Insights to interview 543 top executives. We wanted to understand decision-makers better.

Along the way a clear picture developed. It was a picture that we did not expect.

Contrary to the negative perceptions about being “always on,” this new reality is having a positive effect on people’s work and personal lives.

Ninety-eight percent of executives send work-related e-mails outside of the typical “9-to-5 work week.” Despite this, they said that they feel in control and able to enjoy their personal time.

Only 15 percent said that they struggle to separate work from valuable personal/family time; and 84 percent feel empowered and well prepared to make business decisions.

People no longer feel rushed to make business decisions, instead valuing the freedom and flexibility that this “@Work State of Mind” allows.

We also found that people’s private lives are playing a much bigger role in business decisions. The study shows that more than three-quarters (77 percent) cite personal values as very or critically important to their decision-making.

gyro’s pursuit, as a B2C and B2B global ideas shop, is to understand this @Work State of Mind better than anyone else in the world, so that we can best ignite emotions.

These findings show how today’s independently minded and highly connected executive looks, thinks and feels. See the full study at www.gyro.com/atwork.

We hope this deeper understanding of the @Work State of Mind will inspire you.

What a time to be alive!

Christoph Becker is ceo+cco of gyro, the global ideas shop.

After the financial turmoil of the last few years, we learned that Americans yearned to feel in control of their lives again. Lack of trust in institutions and a sense of insecurity about their futures fed this desire. This insight was the seed of our “You’re In Charge” creative platform.

Americans are optimistic by nature, and despite all of the economic turmoil of recent years, 72 percent of Americans are still optimistic about their futures and 68 percent are optimistic about their financial futures, according to our MOOD (Measuring Optimism, Outlook and Direction) of America survey. Whitman Insight Strategies polled 803 adults late last year to uncover these findings, which also revealed that 66 percent of Americans feel in control of their lives.

While others in the category seemed to be drawn to using fear in their advertising, we felt the time was right, given these empowering and inspirational insights, to try a new, more optimistic approach.

On launch day, our new campaign promoted everyone to chief executive officer of his or her own life. Someone we call the “Chief Life Officer.” It recognizes the fact that our lives are in many ways like businesses. We’re in charge of making big decisions, managing finances and keeping employee morale positive. We are chief  401(k) officers, chief turkey-carving officers, chief tuition officers, and chief I really need a vacation officers. Whoever you are, the main message we wanted to get across is that you’re the boss of your life, and Lincoln Financial is here to help you “Take Charge.”

Our Chief Life Officer campaign, created with gyro New York,  is bringing a very different message to consumers because it inspires them by showing them that they are in charge and that they have the tools necessary to build secure financial futures.

Optimists are realists. They take charge of things they can control; they don’t worry about the things they can’t. The Chief Life Officer (You’re In Charge) campaign we created with gyro New York celebrates the richness of life and drives people to take action.

Jamie DePeau, corporate chief marketing officer at Lincoln Financial Group in Radnor, Penn.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Being creative requires far more than original thinking.

Being creative means that your idea needs to be able to be executed and produced. It needs to engage, be humanly relevant and ultimately drive the response that’s expected of it.

Being creative means knowing how your mind works and how to spot and best capture those flashes of genius. How many of us keep a moleskin note pad or sticky notes by our beds, just ready for when inspiration strikes?

Coming up with creative concepts that aren’t bound by existing thinking is an important aspect of ideation, but the world is full of Walter Mitty-like characters whose ideas are never really strong enough to go anywhere. Moving from the ignition point of an idea to making it happen and pushing it live across the world requires far more than the idea itself.

We’re all competitive when it comes to who has the best idea, be it a hidden trait or an overt characteristic. Competition drives us, it’s a good thing, and it’s pervasive in our society. However, one of the reasons team sports are so popular in our culture is that they provide individuals with the opportunity to compete and cooperate at the same time. At gyro, we believe nurturing an inclusive culture where both competition and cooperation can thrive provides the best setting for being consistently creative.

We have actively embraced creative collaboration. To be creative and innovative is everyone’s responsibility at gyro, not just the creative department. Solving modern business problems in an ever-changing digital landscape requires a team that’s equipped with a mind-set as eclectic and well connected as the world itself. There’s no room for creative apartheid anymore. Anyone can come up with an idea, at any place, at any time.

So whether you believe it’s possible to be consistently creative or not, one thing’s for sure: Great ideas require something far more precious than original thinking alone. They require teamwork.

Peter Davis is executive creative director at gyro Manchester.

Follow Peter on Twitter @digitaldavis.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

1. It’s all about the packaging. In his unveiling of Katniss and Peeta to the world, Cinna took a negative and turned it into a positive. Given that they were from District 12 (the poor mining district), Katniss wondered if they were to be dressed as miners or stripped naked and covered in coal dust. Instead, he made Katniss “the girl who was on fire,” right down to the synthetic flame of the headdress. Yes, when you’re competing against 11 other products on the global stage, it helps to be the one that’s on fire.

2. Don’t be afraid to flaunt your talents. Within a company, marketing can get lost in the mix if it isn’t communicated properly to everyone (the CEO, the CFO, IT, everyone). That’s why it’s good to remember that if you’ve got the skills and your peers are ignoring you, make them notice. Or shoot right at their heads just like Katniss, who unleashed an arrow straight at the Gamemakers’ table, skewering an apple that sat before them in a pig’s mouth and pinned it to the wall. Your message needs to be communicated loud and clear, just like hers.

3. Don’t be afraid to make your own rules. Today it’s Pinterest. Yesterday it was Facebook. Who knows what the next hot marketing channel will be. Marketers have more opportunity than ever to share their brand with the world. This means taking risks, experimenting and making up new rules as they go. (SPOILER ALERT) Like Katniss and Peeta, who threatened the Gamemakers with their poison berries, marketers need to consider drastic measures as the media mix continues to evolve daily.

4. You’ll never survive without your sponsors. Let’s call this one the homage to Rush Limbaugh. It’s one thing to be edgy and a challenger brand, but you still need to be likable enough to have supporters (or, in his case, sponsors). Otherwise, you will end up like Rush or Belvedere vodka—left trying to explain and coping with lost revenue. Katniss and Peeta received several gifts from their sponsors just in the nick of time. None was more important than the medicine Katniss received to save Peeta and herself.

5. Make sure your message is humanly relevant. Katniss deliberated with Haymitch as to how she should handle her debut interview. How would she portray herself to the world? She opted to tell the truth about her family and her sister Prim, whom she loved dearly. Today more than ever, it’s important to be humanly relevant. It’s too easy to be numb with all of the messaging thrown our way. Consumers want to feel emotion. They also want someone or something to root for— make that your brand.

Kenneth Hein is director of North American marketing for gyro, the global ideas shop

Follow him @KennethHein

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network