Is this the new face of business leadership?

I have been studying, practicing, and speaking about transformational leadership and feminist leadership theory for the better part of fifteen years. Over that time period, much has changed in the way we work and with the tools we use to engage the workforce. Sadly, what hasn't changed is the role, representation, and perception of women in the workforce, namely as executives and innovators. That is, until now.
This week at the SAP SuccessConnect event, human resources leaders, the very leaders responsible for people strategy, are coming together to talk about how to use technology to harness the best talent, not just a portion of the population. One of the key components relies on eradicating bias in order to create a culture of inclusion in which everyone can thrive. While this sounds like old news, the fact of the matter is that leaders have a long way to go when it comes to creating gender equitable business environments.

The leadership status quo
Admit it. When someone talks about a captain of industry or a wunderkind start-up CEO who is changing the landscape of business, the image that pops into mind probably looks like something like Matt Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs - not Sheryl Sandberg or Arianna Huffington. This month, Inc. Magazine published its annual list of top 500 Fasted Growing Businesses. Globalization Partners, a professional services company that helps American businesses expand internationally by providing local specialized human resources, was ranked number six. What got them on the top 10 was extraordinary growth (16,197%) in three years. Yet, the media hype has been focused on the fact that the leadership team is all women. "If we were an all-male founding team, no one would mention it," says Nicole Sahin, CEO and Founder of Globalization Partners.
Listening to her founding team share stories of how they established and grew their business so quickly and without the help of venture or angel or venture capital investors, it was clear that much of the media missed the point of the story: what it takes to create something from nothing, something that is a market-maker and sets a new standard for leading stakeholders to a new way of working among us. The way Globalization Partners is being led and managed will change the landscape of what leaders and employees of both genders expect from the entrepreneur experience and from corporate life.

Changing the face of leadership
The rapid pace of innovation required by global companies like Globalization Partners requires leadership styles often displayed and associated with female leaders. Of course, being a woman isn't enough. Changing the way leaders structure and run their businesses is at the core of the new face of leadership. The future of leadership styles should be less about being male or female and more focused on the traits. Through six intentional and inter-related practices, Sahin and her team have created a new leadership paradigm whereby both male and female gender traits can thrive.

• Inclusive culture drives, versus supports, the company's mission, vision, values from the get-go. Globalization Partners services over 100 customers by providing highly skilled employees in over 150 countries. On behalf of their customers, Sahin and her team have created strategic relationships with business partners who reflect the diverse populations in each of the countries in which they operate. Moving beyond diversity, Sahin is steadfast on role-modeling and enabling a culture where inclusion is expected, not just accepted. She personally builds relationships with everyone in her business from the first day of hire. She actively seeks out diverse opinions and encourages innovation that can only come from differing perspectives. The leadership team understands that simply having an open-door policy is not enough; they often act on suggestions.

• Strategic goals are as much about purpose as they are about profit. Sahin's team acknowledges the transactional nature of their business; they hire local employees for American companies who want to set up shop without having to wait long periods of time to work through red tape. They take this work very seriously and work to innovate the platform and ecosystem that is critical to scale while considering the human element. Yet, when they think about the core of their work, a greater, more meaningful calling quickly surfaces. "Through global commerce comes peace," says Sahin. The leadership team is intentional in building a global business as an opportunity for people to create meaningful relationships across cultural and geographic boundaries. "It's hard to go to war against your teammate or someone you value who works for you," says Nancy Cremins, General Counsel at the firm.

• Being brave and informed enough to take unconventional risks in order to grow a business. Female business leaders are often portrayed as risk averse. With the acknowledgement that investment decisions made early in the company's life may not scale at this growth stage, Sahin made the exceptional decision to stop accepting new clients for a few months so that she and her team could evaluate business operations. They reworked much of their operating model and structure. Given the company's growth, it's a risky decision that clearly paid off.

• Retaining top talent requires focusing on the whole person, not just the one who works in your business. In Silicon Valley, free food and foosball tables may be the glue that keeps men and women, who are able to work day-and-night in cult-like atmospheres, engaged on the cool work happening inside of the world's most innovative companies. While the work might be amazing, the approach doesn't leave much room for a full life. Sahin's workforce is 75% women, a number she wants to shift closer to 50% as they grow. Her people strategies are focused on work-life Integration. Sure, there are long days when you are building a high-growth business in a 24-hour global work environment. Yet, her model is showing that people can have fully integrated lives and realize huge success. When she talks about her staff, the focus is on the whole person, not just the employee she sees at the office. The flexible hours, generous family leave and re-entry approaches where new parents come back to work without missing opportunities for growth and advancement are just a start. When thinking about her human resource policies and practices, Sahin and her team always think about the employees' lives inside and outside of their business.

• CEO decisions are based on relational assessments versus strictly linear. While the majority of start-up founders are practically brainwashed to adopt the Lean Start-Up method, Sahin spent a year building her business by travelling the world. She acknowledges that this is not an experience that everyone can afford financially or in the amount of time they have. Like anyone, she employed the tools and resources she had and used them to create the business she knew her clients needed. Sahin learned local business approaches, listened to functional experts and local views as she formed her perspective on how to create just the right business model for success.

• Investing in the future means investing in people. I almost fell off my chair when Sahin told me that she has paid sabbatical written into human resources policies. The sabbatical includes fully paid world travel for employees and their families after five years of service. This new form of leadership understands that in order for your employees to be fully engaged, you have to do more than offer development programs that benefit the business. You need to be willing to invest in what they care about, including seeing the world with their families on the company dime. "Traveling around the world with my husband, meeting people who were so different from me, changed my life. I want my employees to be able to experience that too, with their families," says Sahin.

If there's one thing to take away from the way in which Globalization Partners is growing it is that it's time to change the narrative about women entrepreneurs and corporate executives. We need to move away from the female leadership narrative as a phenomenon and replace it with one that acknowledges the need to include feminist leadership traits as a way forward for innovation. Indeed, Sahin and her team are a new breed of leadership. It's about time.

Once The Domain Of Millennials, Uber And Lyft Are Now Pursuing Seniors

Ride-hailing services want to make sure Grandma Betty can get to bridge club just as easily as her 22-year-old grandson travels to and from ... whatever it is young folks are doing these days.

Once the domain of 20-somethings who might have a drink or two and need a safe ride home, companies like Lyft and Uber have set their sights on a different age range entirely: senior citizens.

Lyft announced Tuesday it has partnered with GreatCall, a mobile phone company that specializes in providing cell phones to seniors, to extend its ride-hailing services to those who ― like the elderly ― may not have a smartphone, much less want to learn how to use an app on one to hail a ride.

Instead of an app, GreatCall customers dial “0” to talk to an operator, who can provide a cost estimate and book a ride. The fare is tacked onto the customer’s monthly cell phone bill.

The L.A. Times notes Uber struck up a similar arrangement with a company called 24Hr HomeCare last week.

Several third-party ride-hailing services also specialize in giving lifts to older adults who don’t have smartphones, including GoGoGrandparent, a newer entrant that adds additional features like meal and grocery delivery options.

As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends.

This is far from either company’s first foray into the senior market, which, judging by recent moves from both Uber and Lyft, seems ripe for disruption.

And it couldn’t come at a better time. The first wave of the so-called “baby boomer” generation turned 65 in 2011, with the number of Americans aged 65 and older projected to keep growing until 2030, when it’s expected to peak at around 71 million people.

Earlier this year, both Uber and Lyft began offering non-emergency medical transport services, specifically targeting customers whose rides would be reimbursed by Medicaid. 

And in the Denver suburb of Centennial, where 15 years from now at least 30 percent of the population is projected to be over the age of 65, city officials are exploring replacing current dial-a-ride services with less expensive, more efficient rides via Lyft.

Starting Aug. 17, the city has embarked on a first-of-its-kind, six-month long pilot project, paying for Lyft rides to and from the area’s major light-rail station in a bid to increase mobility.

“We call Centennial the Silver Tsunami,” Centennial Mayor Cathy Noon told The Atlantic blog CityLab. “As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends. We really want to help keep the people who started Centennial engaged in it.”

Note: The Huffington Post’s editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington is a member of Uber’s board of directors and has recused herself from any involvement in the site’s coverage of the company.

CEO Of Giant Corporation Tells US Government He's The Boss Of Them

Are We the People the boss of giant multinational corporations, or are they the boss of us?

Imagine, if you will, going to the IRS and saying, "I don't think the tax rate is fair so I'm not going to pay it." Regular Americans can't do that. But Apple just did.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by the Washington Post early this month. He was asked about the vast sums of profits that Apple has shifted into overseas tax havens thanks to a loophole in US tax law that lets them "defer" paying taxes on those profits as long as the money technically stays outside the country. Cook said (emphasis added, for emphasis):

And when we bring it back, we will pay 35 percent federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we're in, which is about 5 percent, so think of it as 40 percent. We've said at 40 percent, we're not going to bring it back until there's a fair rate. There's no debate about it.

What would happen to any regular American if they did what Cook did, and said they they aren't going to pay taxes because they don't think the tax rate is "fair"? (Hint: Jail. And maybe 2 or 3 years added to the sentence for the contempt of saying, "There's no debate about it.")

But Apple is a huge multinational corporation, and these days huge multinational corporations are the boss of our Congress. So, CEO Cook gets away with it -- and with keeping $181 billion in tax havens to dodge paying $59 billion in taxes. Cook knows he can just come out and say they are not going to pay their taxes until there is a "fair rate."

Of course, huge multinational corporations will tell you a "fair rate" would be zero. Or better yet, how about We the People just bow down and pay taxes to them. The corporate tax rate used to be 50%. CEOs complained it was "unfair" so it was lowered to 35%. Also, by the way, Apple can deduct taxes it pays elsewhere, including to states, from its federal tax bill.

Think about what We the People could do with that $59 billion Apple owes us.

In all multinational corporations have more than $2.4 trillion stashed in tax havens, dodging maybe $700 billion in taxes.

Think about what We the People could do with that $700 or so billion they owe us.

Meanwhile

Americans for Tax Fairness released a new investigative report showing that Gilead Sciences exorbitantly priced hepatitis C medications -- price gouging ill American patients -- then shifted billions of dollars of the resulting profits to offshore tax havens to dodge taxes.

An August 21 news story in FORA, an Irish business publication, confirmed key findings of the report:

Company filings show that one of the firm's main Irish subsidiaries had revenues of $2 billion in 2012 and made a full-year profit of $1.3 billion but paid nothing to the Irish exchequer as the firm was tax resident in the Bahamas - where zero corporate taxes apply.

At the end of the year, after which the subsidiaries finances are not publicly accessible, the Irish subsidiary had accumulated profits of just under $7 billion.

The company also transferred the ownership of one of its most valuable money-makers, which it acquired for $11 billion, to a separate Irish subsidiary.

So, this company gouges sick Americans and shifts the profits out of the country to dodge taxes. Are We the People the boss of these giant corporations, or are they the boss of us? Whose government is this, anyway? Who is our economy for?

"The Little People Pay Taxes"

Times have changed. People and companies didn't used to get away with snubbing their nose at We the People, and doing things like dodging taxes.

In the 1980s Leona Helmsley was known as the "Hotel Queen." Helmsley and her husband Harry were known for buying apartment buildings, forcing out the tenants, and converting them into condominiums. The Helmsley real estate empire included the Empire State Building.

They also owned hotels. Leona ran as many as 30 Helmsley hotels, with the luxurious Helmsley Palace at the peak, and became famous after she was featured in advertisements.

But Helmsley became known as "the Queen of Mean," because she was notorious for doing things like abusing employees, firing them at Christmas, even evicting her son's widow a few days after he died. Eventually a dissatisfied employee turned her in for various tax crimes and she was indicted on 235 state and federal counts.

The Helmsleys were charged with using hotel money to buy personal items to evade income taxes. Helmsley famously said of the charges, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

We the Little People sentenced Helmsley to 12 years in jail for evading $1.7 million in taxes (eventually resulting in 19 months in jail and 2 years of home arrest.) At her sentencing the judge said:

'There is a community that needs to be served by the enforcement of the law. . . . It is my judgment the motion for sentence reduction should be denied.'

Griesa said that Helmsley's conduct had been 'deliberate, fraudulent, directed against the United States government. It involved evasion of taxes.'

Helmsley was sentenced to jail for evading a pittance of $1.7 million in taxes. Today Apple owes $59 billion. In this age of "mass incarceration" for regular people, imagine a wealthy Wall Street banker or corporate CEO going to jail for something. Actually, you can't even imagine it.

No, instead this is today's reality: Lawmakers Overseeing Wall Street Given Bigger, More Favorable Loans Than Others: Study.

Senator Wyden Says End Deferral Loophole

Some people are trying to restore our democracy, and make We the People the boss of the giant corporations and wealthy CEOs again.

Senator Bernie Sanders has been calling for ending this deferral loophole for a long time. His residential campaign platform called for using the resulting revenue to pay for $1 trillion of infrastructure repair. Senator Elizabeth Warren has also called for ending this loophole.

Last week Oregon Senator Ron Wyden penned an op-ed calling for an end to this corporate tax haven "deferral" loophole, titled "Ending the Biggest Tax Rip-Off -- Tax Deferral." In it Wyden wrote:

...[Tax deferral] is the rule that encourages American multinational corporations to keep their profits overseas instead of investing them here at home, and it does so by granting them $80 billion a year in tax breaks. This policy is as foolish as it is unfair. It simply defies common sense.

Most Americans probably aren't familiar with deferral ...but ... some of the most profitable companies in the world can put off paying taxes indefinitely while hardworking Americans must pay their taxes every year.

Unfortunately, Wyden resorts to offering to bargain with the corporations, offering lower tax rates if they would please invest in the US. Like so many others, Wyden has forgotten that Congress is supposed to be the boss of the corporations.

Sign The Petition

SIGN THE PETITION: Stand with Americans for Tax Fairness and Public Citizen and demand that U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew investigate Gilead's multi-billion-dollar tax dodging scheme and make Gilead pay the taxes it owes U.S. taxpayers.

-------

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progressive Breakfast.

5 Reasons Content Marketing Isn't Working For You

Image Source
Having worked with several clients on developing and executing content marketing strategies for their business, one of the questions most business owners want answers to is why it isn't working for their business. This often leads to content marketers spending on content marketing without seeing any significant results in their bottom line.

If your content marketing efforts haven't been yielding the desired results for your business, you might need to look deep into the structure of your strategy and to discover why content marketing isn't working for you.

The following are reasons most marketers don't see results with content marketing.

You're Ignoring Documentation

Documentation is critical to content marketing, and this very essential strategy has been neglected by many content marketers. Your marketing documentation is what will help you identify the missing link between what is working and what you're doing.

In a CMI research that studied B2B marketers, 53 percent who reported that their content marketing was highly effective had a documentation strategy, while the 40 percent with the least result had no strategy at all. If you're not paying attention to content marketing documentation, you might be finding it hard to validate your content marketing strategy.

Targeting Customers with Irrelevant Content

Targeting your customers with highly relevant content is necessary for content marketing effectiveness. A lot of content marketers confuse meeting content demands with actually meeting the needs of their readers. For your customers to engage with your content, it's very necessary that the content you're pushing to them carries a message that will be valuable to them.

To effectively create content that connects with your customers, you need to evaluate your content marketing plan and come up with your audience persona. This means you have to evaluate your different audiences, identify their pain points and create content that will meet their needs in their journey through your purchase cycle.

Inefficient Distribution Strategy

Overcoming the content distribution hurdle is where a lot of content marketers are usually held back. Without the right distribution strategy, your content marketing is bound to fail. To tackle your content distribution challenges and reach your customers with your content, an effective approach would be to combine the three distribution channels.

There are three forms of distribution: owned media, earned media and paid media. While focusing on a single channel can help you take advantage of concentration, leading digital marketers advise to exploit the potentials of combined channels by getting more creative with your outreach and distribution strategy.

"An efficient distribution strategy combines available distribution channels, helping the target asset acquire more attention through a streamlined effort," says Ali Pourvasei, the founder of a Los Angeles SEO Company.

Your Content Strategy Lacks Credibility

Credibility is a valuable currency in content marketing, and indeed in the entire digital sphere. Brands have learned that their content can help establish credibility and are pushing to see that their content marketing efforts portray their best image to consumers.

If your content marketing lacks credibility, your customers will not trust your brand. There are a lot of factors that can help strengthen the credibility of your content marketing efforts. The following are some:

1. Addressing real concerns
2. Discuss a fresh message
3. Easily solves customer issues
4. Carries brand signals

By utilizing these factors in your content, consumers will engage with your content and you'll find that content marketing easily works for you.

You're Measuring the Wrong Signals

To understand the impact of content marketing efforts, it's necessary to take measurement into consideration. However, content marketers are still struggling with identifying the right signals to measure.

Measuring the wrong signals will give a false representation of your content marketing results -- which will eventually lead to implementing inefficient strategies.

Why An Outsized Number Of Blondes Are Leading The Country

Blondes. They’re stereotypically portrayed as ditzy. They famously have “more fun.” But here’s the head-turning part: women with blonde hair disproportionately hold positions of power in the U.S.

A stunning 48 percent of female chief executives at S&P 500 companies and 35 percent of female senators are blonde, according to findings presented by two business school researchers earlier this month at an Academy of Management annual meeting in Anaheim, California.

The first women to get a major party nomination for president? Blonde. First woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court? Blonde. First women president of Harvard. You guessed it. 

Blond male leaders are far less common. (Sorry, Donald Trump.) Just 2.2 percent of male CEOs had blond hair, a 2005 study found. That’s more in line with the hair color’s natural occurrence. Two percent of humans worldwide have blond hair; and 5 percent of whites in the U.S., according to the researchers.

Stephen Lam/Reuters

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer -- 48 percent of female CEOs on the S&P 500 sport blonde locks.

If you include women and men who dye their hair, certainly, the blond population rises, but probably not anywhere near 50 percent, Jennifer Berdahl, who coauthored the presentation, told The Huffington Post. “If women are choosing to dye their hair blonde, there’s something strategic about the choice,” Berdahl said.

The prevalence of blonde female CEOs doesn’t contradict the stereotype of the dumb blonde ― it plays into it ― Berdahl and her coauthor Natalya Alonso, of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, explain in their presentation.

In addition to incompetence, light-colored hair is also associated with youth, attractiveness, dependence and warmth. All of these traits counter-balance the more aggressive, dominant ― and stereotypically male ― characteristics required to run a large organization, the researchers explain.

Andy Katz/Pacific Press via Getty Images

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) -- 38 percent of women in the Senate are blonde.

“If the package is feminine, disarming and childlike,” Berdahl told The Huffington Post. “You can get away with more assertive, independent and [stereotypically] masculine behavior.” 

The researchers didn’t consider TV news anchors, but it seems anecdotally true that Fox News ― a conservative network with somewhat antsy views on the role of women ―  employs an awful lot of blonde anchors. Consider Megyn Kelly and, until recently, Gretchen Carlson, who certainly played up a “dumb blonde” image to counterbalance her background as a Stanford educated violinist.

Berdahl and Alonso don’t claim that women are consciously going blonde to disarm their overwhelmingly male colleagues. But their work, which includes three studies where men were asked various questions about photos of the same woman, with either brown or blonde hair, shows this disarming factor is very much at play for women leaders.

Researchers from Northwestern University school of business discovered a parallel phenomenon with black male leaders, who are more likely to have a roundish “baby-face” than their white counterparts. In studies, black leaders were also rated as warmer and less threatening. While it’s fairly acceptable for white male leaders to get angry (see: Bernie Sanders/Donald Trump.) Black men are judged harshly for displaying that kind of emotion.

Berdahl and Alonso also found that male CEOs are more likely to be married to blondes: 43 percent of the highest-paid male CEOs have a blonde spouse.

The blonde thing is likely a natural reaction to the racist and sexist notions that underpin the dominant conception of what a “leader” looks like. White. Male. Conduct a Google image search for CEO, you’ll get a lot of pictures of caucasian dudes. Or just look at the faces of the CEOs on the Fortune 500.

Very few women make it to the CEOs office and those who do are overwhelmingly white. After Ursula Burns steps down from her perch at Xerox later this year, there will be no black women CEOs in the S&P 500. It’s worth noting that blonde hair is a caucasian trait. It’s also more common in children.

For their presentation, Berdahl and Alonso conducted three studies, using about 100 male participants, to see how they felt about women CEOs who were blonde and brunette. The first two studies confirmed stereotypes: Respondents rated blondes and brunettes equally attractive, but blondes were found to be less competent and independent.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

IBM chief executive Virginia 'Ginni' Rometty. Nearly half of the (very few) women on the S&P 500 have blonde hair.

Then, participants were shown a picture of the same woman ― with blonde and brown hair and asked who they’d recommend for a CEO or Senate position. The majority of participants voted for the brunette because she is “intelligent, professional and serious,” the presentation quotes a respondent saying. 

The third study is where “the blonde paradox” lies: Men were asked to rate female leaders who displayed a dominant leadership style ― they read a quote where the CEO says “I don’t want there to be any ambiguity about who’s in charge,” and “My staff knows who the boss is.” When this came out of the brown-haired woman’s mouth, she was rated very harshly on warmth and attractiveness.

The blonde did much better.

“The same woman changes her hair color from blonde to brunette, and she’s seen as a bitch,” Berdahl said.

David Giesbrecht/Netflix

Claire Underwood, played by Robin Wright, didn't stay brunette for long on "House of Cards."

Fans of Netflix’s “House of Cards” may recall that the first lady on that series, the ruthless “ice queen” Claire Underwood, dyed her hair back to its natural brown during Season 3 of the show in a fit of rebelliousness.

It didn’t play well and her handlers were soon urging her to go back to blonde: “Iowa voters love the blonde,” she’s told by an advisor.

Of course they do.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified Natalya Alonso’s surname as Alfonso. 

Top GOP Congressman Tells Trump To Release His Taxes

Donald Trump should release his tax returns and full medical records, Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz (Utah) said Wednesday.

“You’re just going to have to do that, it’s too important,” Chaffetz said on CNN. “If you’re going to run and try to become the president of the United States, you’re going to have to open up your kimono and show everything, your tax returns, your medical records.”

Chaffetz said that the standard applies to both candidates. Clinton has released her 2015 tax return and medical history. Trump has only released a cursory, bombastic letter from his doctor.

Trump said in May that he hoped to release his tax returns, but has since refused to, saying he can’t because he’s under audit by the IRS. However, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said that being under audit does not prevent a person from releasing returns. “If you’re being audited, and you want to do something else, share that information with your returns, you can do that,” Koskinen told CSPAN in February. 

In July, Trump’s then-campaign chairman was adamant that the Republican nominee would not release his tax returns. Earlier this week, Eric Trump said it would be “foolish” for his father to release his taxes. “You learn a lot more when you look at a person’s assets,” Eric said. “You know how many hotels we have around the world? You know how many golf courses we have around the world?”

The value of Trump’s assets, however, is not the simple matter Eric Trump implies it is. In his personal financial disclosure detailing those assets, Donald Trump says he is worth $10 billion. Bloomberg and Forbes, however, estimate his wealth at $2.9 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively. And Tim O’Brien wrote in his 2005 biography of Trump that “three people with direct knowledge of Donald’s finances, people who had worked closely with him for years, told me that they thought his net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million.”

The New York Times reported last week that Trump’s debt totaled $650 million, about twice as much as the candidate had disclosed. The discrepancy, the Times said, arises from the fact that the financial disclosure forms for candidates are not designed for a person with business dealings as complex as Trump’s are.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

To Stand Out in a Crowded Market, Think Luxury, Not Price

Marcia Roosevelt, Saatchi & Saatchi NY

In an era where household brands are locked in a battle for attention and loyalty in an overcrowded market, Amazon’s recent announcement that they would be launching a line of private label products felt like yet another blow to an already struggling industry.

The breadth of this new product line, which will offer everything from coffee to diapers to cleaning supplies, stands as a threat to hundreds of brands who are working to find new ways to compete in an environment where sales are shifting online, a category that Amazon itself already owns, and functional performance differences between leading brands are often negligible. The rules of engagement have changed, as the tried and true formula of strong product claims and mass distribution is failing to get the results it once did.

So how can legacy mass-market brands win against these odds, shoring themselves up against private label encroachment, and at the same time, stand out from one other? By taking a page from the luxury playbook. While many companies see fit to engage in a race to the bottom on price, smart brands - even those with a less than lux background - can use a luxury approach to win loyalty and create memorable, covetable user experiences that elevate them above the rest. Here’s where to begin.

Prioritize the “in-use” experience - For decades, mass marketers have been focusing on that first moment of truth - the retail encounter. But with brand loyalty at a low, it’s time to create meaningful engagement by shifting focus to the second moment of truth - the experience of actually using the product. One brand doing this well is Lululemon, who designs their products to evoke a response long after a buyer sees them for the first time with in-use experiences they call “engineered sensations.” Available in relaxed, naked, held-in, hugged and tight, these sensations are unique to the brand and allow buyers to choose how they want the product to make them feel. These experiences don’t always need to be tied directly to how the product functions. Aesthetics also play a huge role in this, as people will pay more for a product that they would be proud to display after the packaging is thrown away. Brands need to remember that luxury is an experience that lasts, not just something that drives a decision at the shelf.

Embrace simplicity - Today’s store aisles are a visual overload, with brands vying for attention with shiny packages, in-aisle promotional devices and ever more complicated display pieces. Brands working to convey luxury should think of packaging as a display and a means of generating equity building repeat business, rather than something screaming for attention in the aisle. To give consumers a luxurious respite in this chaotic marketplace, brands should consider refined graphics, nomenclature and character. Simplicity is reason why Apple products are synonymous with luxury and style, while also being a mass-market success story. You don’t have to be rich to own them, and yet they feel aspirational. This approach also works for many small cosmetics brands that command a higher price point by selling understatement and an air of refinement.

Make memories through emotion: As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said…but people will never forget how you made them feel.” In the competition for memorability, emotional resonance is what brings consumers back for more. Household brands have always worked to connect with buyers through emotional messaging around caring for their families. For example, last June Saatchi helped Pampers launch its #BetterForBaby campaign which featured a re-write on the beloved “Hush Little Baby” lullaby that listed all the things people would do better for babies in the modern age. The heartwarming spot showcased how everyone can do their part to make a newborn’s life a little bit better, and gained an overwhelming number of pledges to make these ideas a reality.

Adding to this, brands would be well advised to find an emotional appeal that connotes luxury and is unique to their product such as making a buyer feel special, as if they’re getting something exclusive, or smart, in that they’re more knowledgeable than other consumers for buying your product.

Think about where you’re seen as well as how you’re seen - Where your brand is distributed conveys context and sets expectations about what products sold in that environment are worth. The reason why salon hair care products cost much is that they are equated with the expertise of stylists in salons. Think outside the normal retail channels and try to find another space for your product that will raise its cache, whether it’s placing a brand of coffee into high-end coffee shops or personal care products at luxury hotels.

There’s more to developing a luxury brand than just being expensive, or associated with the right celebrity or social influencer. With the right mindset and messaging, brands at any price point can communicate the values that make luxury goods special and memorable, and keep consumers coming back for more.

Advertising Week returns to NYC September 26 - 30, 2016! Our Huffington Post readers enjoy a 20% discount on Delegate and Super Delegate passes by clicking here.