Everyone loves the Wendy's social media accounts. How does a square burger chain dance so gloriously on the line of impropriety that other brands can't even get near? They embrace their position as a "challenger" brand. Specifically, they don't shy away from the core idea that you need some kind of conflict in order to create a meaningful narrative.

The concept of "newsjacking" isn't new to my content marketing folk. It's the process of finding a timely (and aligned) way to jump on a current story in the next and ride it's coattails. Doing it right requires speed and guts (see: Oreo and Super Bowl blackout, or pretty much anything Wendy's does), which isn't easy. So here are some great examples of the best instances of newsjacking in 2019 you can learn from.

Consumer brand folks spend a lot of time thinking about brand extension, taking a success in one product and extending it to more. There are eight defined ways of extending the brand, and while some of them don't obviously apply to EB'ers, there are some that will turn your gears quite a bit.

Branding Mag (rightly) calls "shenanigans" on what feels like every company embracing the concept of "purpose" as a driver in their marketing. To the author's eyes, it is obviously self-serving and has been used to the point of uselessness. That's not good news for us employer brander folks, many of whom rely seriously on the concept of "inspiring purpose" in their EVPs (I mean, now many times in one newsletter am I allowed to use the term 'over-indexed' before this thing gets silly?). But there's some good, news, especially for brands who aren't just slapping a fresh of coat of "purpose" in the brand as the solution d'jour. Defining and proving how your company is trying to create a change in the world is the first step. Get it right, make it real, or just don't both.

I like to keep one eye on what the consumer and corporate marketers are up to, and it turns out there's a wholesale shift happening where even the CMOs are spending more and more time working on the company's brand. Why does that matter? You know how every time someone asks you what's the ROI of employer branding? You can always say that if branding isn't important, why is the most important marketing person in the company working on it so much?

You can't convince anyone of anything using only logic (see: reddit political forums, twitter political chats, et al). You need an emotional reaction, after which, the listener will find the logic to justify their new position. I ended up podcasting a bit about this idea, but here's a solid article if this is a subject that interests you.

To steal a line from David C. Baker, you can't read your label if you're inside the jar. If you are trying to see and distill your own employer brand, your biggest obstacle is you (and your biases you can't see). By way of example, my colleague Dennis Billgren reminds us that you might "know" that what US tech workers want is more work-life balance and autonomy. So why does Tesla and SpaceX (notorious for NOT having those things) consistently rank at the top of most desired employers? What you think you know isn't the same as objective knowledge, especially in employer branding.

Branding Magazine says people see brands as people. For use, our brands ARE people. Which means that we need to be thinking psychologically about how our prospects see us.

Don't let a focus on "authenticity" keep your brand from evolving and growing.

What if you had to solve employer branding challenges and had no idea what employer branding was? You'd probably end up re-inventing it yourself. Which is effectively what this article does. But it's interesting to see how someone outside the space would approach the same issues we wrestle with ever day.

"With an erosion of trust in our institutions, people are choosing to vote with their wallets by supporting brands that have values that align with their own."

How does your brand change what it values? Here are six possible ways to approach how you change in light of the crisis (based on a study of how brands changed in 2009 after the initial housing collapse). Thinking through these ideas is how to position your brand to be far more effective and valuable once things calm down.

We probably all have favorite ways companies are changing what/how they are working because of CV. Here's a great wrap-up of how 50+ companies companies are changing their products and internal processes. (Keep this list handy when your leadership is talking bout what changes you can make and you'll look like a genius when you can name other companies making similar changes.) And here is a list of brand who are going a step further to change their comms to encourage social distancing.

We probably all have favorite ways companies are changing what/how they are working because of CV. Here's a great wrap-up of how 50+ companies companies are changing their products and internal processes. (Keep this list handy when your leadership is talking bout what changes you can make and you'll look like a genius when you can name other companies making similar changes.)

interesting pieces about what employer brand really means. To Emily, the employer brand is the company's conscience.

interesting pieces about what employer brand really means. To Steve, the brand is the connection between the company and the employee.

Why is an employer brand important? I am a total employer brand nerd. I talk about employer branding.I wrote an essay on how this is the time in which your employer brand is truly revealed. It is during a crisis that we see that we were putting our faith in pretty words to attract talent, or if we were portraying our organization in a meaningfully different way. I'm hoping its a little more inspirational than the this little description makes it sound.

We're all so primed to being "understood," that in a lot of ways, it limits our thinking. If you care most about being understood, you end up softening or dumbing-down your strategy or idea, sometimes negating the idea altogether. So maybe being "misunderstood" is an interesting litmus test for your idea. Example: the history of Amazon, who has been misunderstood its entire corporate life.

"Not only is it a safety issue, it's a business issue," Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban told CNBC.

Paging Captain Obvious: HBR finally has decided that job postings are a good way to attract better talent. Hey, who's snitchin?! Anyway, I just did a webinar on how to write better job postings faster, so if you want to see the recording, you'll have to ask me nicely. Just reply to this email.

Usually, when I get looped into "should recruiting have it's own social channels" fights, the fight is based on feelings and politics. How controlling is marketing being? How willing are you to care and feed the channel? Etc. But Hubspot offers a smart set of arguments as when when you should (and should not) launch your own dedicated social channels.

I had a fun conversation over at Chad & Cheese on employer branding in a post-COVID world that got some surprisingly positive mentions.

Before I roll out some cool new stuff (I'll be able to announce it in a few weeks, I hope), I've been thinking about metrics a lot. So this article on how to think about and measure your brand equity really stuck with me. (Pro tip: use the term "brand equity" more at work to elevate your own personal brand.)

I will admit right now that I have yet to see a "talent community" which is actually more than just a mailing list and job posting spam. A community is a place where there is two-way interaction including between members, not just a set of targets to blast with email. (By the way, if you read that as "that's why I shouldn't build a community, you're missing the point: there's a huge opportunity here to build a community because everyone wants one and no one's done it right yet!) So it might make sense to take this opportunity, as you pivot the brand and figure out your strategy going forward, to think about getting serious about your own community.

Is it time to surge? If you're business isn't in one of the industries being crushed by the pandemic (retail, movie theaters, travel, live events, etc), you might be surprisingly well-positioned to level up. So if you can read past the example of Southeast Asian economies, here are the seven reasons the a company will surge. Take a moment and give each of the seven drivers a few minutes of thought. I bet you can come up with a bunch of smart projects to facilitate your surge (oh, and feel free to link to the article when you discuss the projects, to show that you are taking your cues from a higher order of publications).

I loved this piece from Branding Mag on "upbranding," the process of elevating your own brand relative to the competition. The goal is help your brand stand out and appear more valuable (something we probably all would like) by tapping in emotional and rational drivers. The kicker for me was the idea of working t appear more exclusive, something not everyone could have. As our brands hire on quality instead of quantity, exclusivity is a close cousin.

Speaking of "pivot," how deep are you in pivoting your content strategy? Here are two good guides on how to make a quick change of direction from Hubspot and Talent Brand Alliance.

Emily Firth puts this idea front and center, claiming that now is the time for EB to show the value it can bring to the company beyond pipeline-filling (and she's 101% right).

There are some nice examples here, but the real power is in the headline: Content is king as brands make themselves useful. Useful?!?! Wow. But it's a fair shot. Brands are so often seen as fuzzy-bunny nice-to-haves, the thing you invest in once things are nice and cushy. True of consumer and employer brands, the Covid pivot means brands themselves are reinventing what they can be to the company. And for us, it is absolutely true.

This might make you feel good (or at least a slight twinge of schadenfreude) to see that marketing likes to complain about how it isn't take seriously in the board room, much like how many of us feel disrespected by marketing. Strangely, the solution to both problems is to stop relying on internal metrics and focus on real business metrics.