Image: Greg Lauren Cotton Hoodie

​Corporate Challenge:  Upcycling in response to consumer trends focused on climate change.
 
Ironbound Strategy:  Powerful brands are corporate ambassadors of social responsibility.  They appeal to their employees and customers by engaging in strategic activities that reduce waste on society.  Brands that upcycle have an opportunity to expand their product narratives, and thereby increase their appeal, by continuing the original story of upcycled materials.

​Ironbound Action:  Haute couture designer and global ambassador, Greg Lauren, focuses on upcycled high fashion.  Each garment is uniquely designed to preserve the emotional connection of the original vintage fabric, while upcycled into a completely new transformation.   Using entirely upcycled iconic American materials, with a focus on decommissioned military textiles, each collection embodies a vintage and futuristic nihilistic theme.  By unlocking past identity salience, sophisticated consumers are magnetized by unique and fascinating storylines.  Brand power is fueled by expanding stories that create value to build a better world. 

Image: Snapchat AR Experience

​Corporate Challenge: Creating new ways to promote a brand.

Ironbound Strategy: Augmented reality (AR) is a fun way of getting the attention of millennials.  Using AR to create long term value for customers, employees, and society will convert the hype into loyal customers.

Ironbound Action:  California based Snapchat is helping brands with entering the AR market space.  Recently Snapchat created a virtual 360 shopping experience for Lego’s new clothing line.  Snap users could move around a virtual store, purchase items, interact with Lego characters, and even have the Lego DJ change the in-store music.  Brands can use AR to tailor their customer experiences, and take online shopping to a more personal and technologically thrilling level.  AR is still new and exciting.  Brands that are dedicated to their customers will likely be the first to invest in AR, and dominate the space.

Image: Wegman's Employee Satisfaction Photo

​Corporate Challenge:  Building a strong and loyal fan base by being cool. 
 
Ironbound Strategy:  Being cool is attractive.  Powerful brands become cool by centering value creation around all stakeholders.  First, they focus on building a strong and independent presence in society.  Second, they confirm their coolness by creating the best value for customers.  Finally, they create exceptional value for employees so that coolness of product and service innovation continuously evolves.  

Image: Makers Mark paper straws

​Corporate Challenge: Discovering ways to optimize new trends.

Ironbound Strategy: Market spaces are constantly changing.  Avoid brand stagnation by constantly creating value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action:  Kentucky based Makers Mark became one of the first brands to put their logo on paper straws.  Millennials have been seeking solutions to the 390 million plastic straws used daily in the United States, and placed pressure on companies to stop using them.  The old-fashioned paper straw (patented in 1888) has seen stellar growth as companies like the Walt Disney Company committed to ending their use of plastic straws by 2020.  Changing market spaces create opportunities for brands to attract new customers.  Brands that leverage environmental trends are viewed favorably by millennials, the incoming largest consumer demographic.
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Image: Ford GoBikes

Corporate Challenge: Managing a brand during a global crisis on the overuse of plastic.

Ironbound Strategy: Find creative ways to upcycle plastic or avoid plastic entirely. Brands that care about creating value for customers and employees, also have a responsibility to create value for society.

Ironbound Action: Michigan based Ford Motor Company recycles all of the plastic they use in their car manufacturing process, and then upcycles the plastic to use on future cars.  Since 1990, the underbody covers used in all Ford vehicles has come from their recycled plastic. Additionally, the Ford Motor Company exclusively uses 100% locally sourced renewable energy. More companies need to follow the lead of companies like Ford and become better stewards of our small planet. 

Image: Apple Watch

​Corporate Challenge: Attaining and retaining customer loyalty.

Ironbound Strategy: Brands that focus on creating the best products possible have excellent customer loyalty. By constantly creating value for employees, and society, the brand is also guaranteed exponential growth.

Ironbound Action: California based Apple Inc creates value for customers by designing the best products possible.  Last summer an Apple Watch was lost at Huntington Beach, and spent six months at the bottom of the sea.  It eventually washed ashore, was returned, and to the owner’s surprise it still worked. Millennials show brand preferences for companies that create the best products possible. Making the best products must be a priority for any brand that wants to succeed in the next decade.

Image: Mickey Mouse Graduating

​Corporate Challenge: What a brand should do to truly elevate employees.

Ironbound Strategy: Sponsoring educational opportunities creates immense value for employees, who will then create immeasurable value for the brand’s customers and society.

Ironbound Action: California based Walt Disney Company created a program to educate their hourly workers.  In the Disney Aspire program, Disney will cover tuition, books, and incidental costs up front for their 80,000 eligible employees that want to pursue a vocation, high school equivalency, undergraduate degree, and master’s degrees.  In their own description, they claim, “the sky’s the limit”.  Disney is one of the most powerful brands in the world because they never stop looking for ways to constantly create value for their employees.

Image: Casper Mattress in a Box

Corporate Challenge: How to go viral using value creation theory.

Ironbound Strategy: Influencers can be employees, customers, or fans out in society.  Constantly creating value for those key stakeholders will increase the number of influencers who share your brand.

Ironbound Action: California based Casper invested in various marketing strategies to increase their revenues.  The campaign that provided the highest number of sales was by giving referral bonuses of $75 per sale.  Influencers on YouTube quickly adopted the campaign, making viral videos promoting Casper mattresses in order to influence their viewers to make purchases.  By creating value for Influencers, Casper was able to increase revenue from $100M in 2015 to $600M in 2018.  Influencers can help brands with creating more value for their key stakeholders, and empower the brand to do more good in the world.

Image: Eleven Madison Park

​Corporate Challenge: Can creating bespoke experiences grow a brand?

Ironbound Strategy:  Every effort to create value for customers, employees, and society gets noticed.  A brand’s loyalty increases when value is constantly being created for their customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: New York based restaurant Eleven Madison Park was already known as one of the best restaurants in the world, but their founders wanted to find new ways of creating even more value for their customers. Soon the team developed a new job called ‘Dreamweavers’, who used available data on guests to create new and bespoke dining experiences for them.*  Designing custom experiences helped elevate the restaurant’s status in the haute cuisine world.  Brands that look for unique ways of creating more value for their stakeholders will always be chosen over their competitors.

Image: Versace Ford Fashion Show

​Corporate Challenge: Empowering your brand while having fun.

Ironbound Strategy: Brands that find fun new ways to create value for their customers and employees have a positive effect on creating value for society.

Ironbound Action: Michigan based Ford Motor Company chose to co-brand with Versace in an unpredictably fun way.  Ford’s normal headlines of higher revenues ($156B to $160B) but lower profits ($16B to $14B) halted to showcase their lineup of Versace apparel including sneakers, jewelry, jackets, a $1,135 hoodie, and even pajama pants. By co-branding the blue oval logo with Versace, Ford shook up the high fashion world, and made people realize that brands need to have more fun with their logos. Brands that make an effort to be fun, are generally the brands that already create a lot of value for their customers, employees, and society.