Brand You Economics: Timeless, Tangible Principles and Tools to Build Your Brand Legacy

© 2021 Arnt Eriksen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/27/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8437-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8436-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8435-7 (e)

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1

Inception

The New World

Introduction

Principles

World of Media

Chapter 2

Publishers

The Scale of Credibility

Idea Differentiation Curve

B2B/B2C

Chapter 3

Welcome To Brand You Economics

Seven Ways to Humanize Your Brand

What Is the Goal of Brand You Economics?

You Are A Brand

Calling All Brands! It’s Time to Become Human

What’s the Challenge for Brands?

What Are the First Steps for Marketing Teams?

How Do Companies Get Started in Brand Humanization?

The Importance of Brand Storytelling

Examples of Successful Brand Storytelling

The Brand Is You

Influencer Marketing Has Been Around Longer Than You Think

What Is Influencer Marketing?

When Did Influencer Marketing Begin?

Examples of Influencer Marketing before Social Media

So What’s Different Now?

The Tipping Point Started It All

Influencer Marketing Facts

Why Is Influencer Marketing So Popular Today?

Chapter 4

Small World

Three Pixels of Separation: Marketing to Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

Diving Into Customer Journey Mapping The Easy Way

The Customer Journey

What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

Who Is Involved in CJM?

What Does CJM Look Like?

What Are the Advantages of Creating Customer Journey Maps?

What Components Should Be Included in a Customer Journey Map?

Chapter 5

Touchpoints (Behaviours)

Find (Strangers)

Like (Customers)

Love (Friends)

Repeating The Process

Chapter 6

How To Build Your Brand: Behaviours

Your Business’s Success Is Built by Your Brand

Knowing Your Audience Is Critical to Your Brand

Mind The Gap

Who Are You? Why Should I Care?

We All Have a Story; What Is Yours?

Pimp My Ride *

Chapter 7

Principles

Principles

Define Your Goal

Purpose

Purpose/Mission/Goal

Permission

One Rule to Rule Them All

1rE2zag

1

R

E2

Zag

Focus on the Horizon

Chapter 8

Conclusion

Purpose

People

Principles

Performance

End Note

Case Study: Domino’s

Acknowledgements

To my parents, Tove and Kåre, who supported me, guided me, and

gave me everything I needed to become the person I am today.

And to my amazing kids, Arnt David, Kris Isak,

and Natalie, for keeping me accountable, motivated,

and proud; unconditional love for always.

It’s kind of fun to do

the impossible.

—Walt Disney

FOREWORD

I used to hate speaking in front of people. I got so nervous, dry mouth, racing heart, trembling voice, just hopeless, but then, in 2008, that changed. First I spoke in front of forty colleagues about the trends I learned about from an event I attended, and since then, I have been speaking on stages all over the world: the Nordics (of course), the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Australia, Iceland, and audiences ranging from twenty (the worst) to three thousand (easy). I still get nervous, but in a good way. Now I thrive and love being on stage to share what I know. I made (what I thought) the impossible, possible, and I love it. I usually start my keynotes and public speaking presentations with a picture of the tiny island where I first grew up. It is a small, rigid island in the cluster of islands known as Lofoten, situated in the north of Norway.

There, in this bridge-connected group of islands, is an island by the name of Hadsel Island, with a small village named Stokmarknes, a small town with approximately eighteen hundred inhabitants. At the age of four, I had my first memories of significance, and my network consisted of my mother, father, my elder brother, Ken-Tore, and my closest friends: Steinar, Claus, Julie, and Elisabeth.

Before my family came to Stokmarknes, we had moved around in the country quite a lot, as my brother was struggling with asthma in his early years (he is four years older than me). First it was Mosjøen, the city where I was born, but we only stayed for six months, then came Harstad, Fagernes, Røros, and Tromsø before we ended up living in Stokmarknes in 1975. I often get asked by people, when told of all the places I lived in my early years, whether my father was in the army, as they tend to move quite a bit when they are excelling in level and grade, but nothing could be further from the truth, though it might seem as the most natural and obvious explanation. I do have a lot of army people in my family, but not my dad.

My dad is a printer, and in Stokmarknes, both my parents worked at the region’s book-printing shop. My dad had a C-level manager job, and my mom worked as a typist on what would be considered the first computers of the time within the industry.

I always came by their workplace after school and watched the huge machinery produce wonderful books and impressive brochures and magazines. I loved to play with the old wood-framed letters with sans and serif fonts in every conceivable size, and I used to combine the letters and write my name and other sentences, which I then pressed onto beautiful structured paper with various colours. I also came across the printshop’s stack of 24k gold leaf sheets, used to create the imprinted titles onto the cover of books. I’m pretty sure I cost them a small fortune, as I loved to create different designs and illustrations with the sheets of gold.

I guess this is the point in time when my interest for graphic design and visual storytelling came to life. This is where I had my first encounter with the process of creating a book from cover to cover, seeing the finished product, using the various techniques and machines to make the different elements that ended up in this beautiful book, with the amazing smell of quality paper with elegant gold letters on the front of the cover. It was craftsmanship at its best of my knowledge back then, and I was fascinated and impressed by how it all came to life.

My dad was a very hard-working man, no stranger to the midnight oil, and he worked with passion and an emerging drive to deliver the highest standard of quality; he pushed himself and his staff to their best, which sometimes included working over the weekend to meet a deadline and deliver as promised. I can easily connect my own moral of hard work and standards directly linked to seeing my dad work as much and hard as he did.

After five years at this small place in Lofoten (look it up, and you’ll be impressed with the nature), it was time to leave the north of Norway and head on south, to a slightly bigger and more picturesque town called Grimstad, a small place with deeply religious inhabitants.

It is hard to explain the contrast from the move of almost two thousand kilometres to the south of Norway, where everything was softer, warmer, stranger, but yet more pleasant. The majestic mountains from the north were replaced with softer and flatter countryside and coastline. My parents sold us the idea of the warmer summers, and when it rained, it was hard, intense, but short, which was very welcomed. They convinced us, and the small town of 14,800 was a new and exciting step on our journey.

My father’s first job was at the local newspaper, where he stayed for a year. He then took the step from being a worker to becoming an entrepreneur. In 1983, he started his own printshop with a friend he had worked with at the newspaper. My mother joined them some months later to help with typing and administrative tasks.

As a kid, it was priceless to be able to be a part of my parents’ start-up, building a sustainable business from scratch, getting their first small group of clients, establishing a credible reputation. I spent every single moment of my free time at the printshop. It was natural, as they both had to work hard in the beginning to build the business and make ends meet. I remember helping them with all the finishing work: gluing, assembling, stapling, and packaging the finished products for delivery. My brother and I spent the weekends assembling and stapling the program for the local soccer team before their home games. It was a valuable lesson to be part of assisting your parents in creating their own dream.

After some years, I moved up the ranks and was given access to the heavy machinery: the Heidelberg press. I printed everything from business cards, letterheads, and stationery up to the full four-colour brochures, all that at the age of thirteen. I felt both proud and accomplished.

More importantly, I learned many critical things during that period of time in my life: To make things happen, you have to work hard; the beauty of process; the importance of taking responsibility, delivering high-quality service to our clients, and building strong relationships and loyal customers were all key. At my parents’ printshop, I was introduced to the four-colour process (CMYK), explored the vast and amazing world of typography and letterheads, and developed a strong passion for craftsmanship. Combined with high-quality standards, we had a killer combination.

This was also where I experienced the study of economics for the first time, with being hands-on with production, distribution, and consumption of printed goods. I understood the process of the business, how the clients entered the store with an order, or a need, and then seeing how the product was made from A-Z in the shop, delivered to the client, only to later see it circulated in the community. It made a strong impression on me.

Another thing I learned at the printshop was that I didn’t want to be a printer. This was, of course, a huge disappointment to my dad, as he was expecting and hoping I would take over the family business one day. I was more keen and driven to create the ideas, layouts, and designs being printed and produced, than the printing job itself.

So at the age of sixteen, it was time for me to move out and begin my journey, start my designated walk of life. I went to another small town, which had one of the country’s two universities for the craft of visual communication.

This was the next important step on my path to where I am now, and I hope you’ll bear with me. The reason I want to share this with you in this book is so that you understand the context of where I am coming from, my learnings and collected experience I have acquired over the past thirty-odd years.

Brand has always been important to me and something I have been passionate about since back in school, when I designed logos, product names, packaging, and hand-made typography. I also found my love for advertising, getting familiar with the masters: Ogilvy, Bates, Leo Burnett, and Bill Burnbach.

What I am proud of and what has shaped me over the years is the fact that I have persistence, stamina, and the gusto to make shit happen. I never give up, and if one way doesn’t work, I try another. This has given me opportunities to both succeed and fail. I’ve owned my own agency, I’ve had companies went bankrupt and failed miserably, but I’ve also worked with and for some amazing agencies: Recommended, Isobar, Creuna, DDB, and Ogilvy, and I think the fact that I’ve failed a few times as an entrepreneur has given me the strength, insights, understanding, and empathy of what it means to have your own company, to burn the midnight oil, to believe in what you set out to do, to be crazy enough to think that you are going to change the world.

I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons over the course of my life. Some, granted, I would have preferred avoiding at that particular moment in time: having to fire a colleague, or to inform the staff their paycheque will be delayed, or the worst message, to say that I’ve failed as a leader and the company has gone out of business.

Hard-earned lessons, but they made me who I am, and I am stronger, I am wiser, and I also understand and respect the life and path of an entrepreneur. What I lack in business skills may be compensated for by understanding the importance of brand and my marketing skills. I have worked on and with some amazing brands over the past decades, from small local businesses with amazing potential and owners, to national, regional, and global brands. We faced different challenges, but I’ve discovered some common drivers and barriers that can be solved by focusing on the right principles, then developing methods and assets to solve any problem the brand is facing.

This is the process I love. This is why I love what I do. This is why I love being a mentor and advisor to companies, and also why I decided to write this first book of mine, to share some of my knowledge, insight, and passion with you.

I am going to give you some key learnings and share my experience with you on how I went from being a kid from a small Norwegian island to a global citizen in this world of ours with