Customers love your product & services. They love working with your staff. But when asked by friends and colleagues, they are telling the wrong story – or at best – a broad one. True, they are speaking passionately about your company. But they are not telling a focused story about your impact on them and potential impact on others.

Chances of getting a call or even a mere Twitter follower from a recommendation like that…fairly low.

As Blake talked about last week, the general assumption for most of the C-Suite is that if customers love working with you and your company – you've succeeded. A job well done. Mission accomplished. But a raving fan is not the end goal. These days, its the basic starting point for the business to just ‘make it‘. But ‘making it‘ isn't setting you up to be a successful, growing company.

Branding is all about alignment. Alignment of vision & value focused on and communicated through message & visuals. Alignment ensures the right gut feeling.

- Are your customers happy, but unclear?
- Are you truly focused…and I mean really focused?
- Is your brand aligned with this focus?

In a changing marketplace of infinite choice, being focused and clear is paramount to your ability to do more than just grow today….you want sustained growth for tomorrow.

Find your value, focus on your value, commit to your value, and share it with the world.

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There is much to be said about the causes and ramifications of Gourmet shutting its doors, and what this suggests about our culture. One particular article caught my attention — a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Christopher Kimball.

"The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up."

Experts are created not from the top down but from the bottom up. Indeed, it seems we are fighting a losing battle against the commoditizing of, well, expertise. It's everywhere. CNN passing off Twitter and Facebook feeds as news, eye-roll-inducing town hall meetings on decisions affecting our lives, poorly written blogs taking over legitimate journalism. It goes on. "Power to the people" has literally taken on a new meaning.

Of course, design has taken quite a beating of its own. As more and more of our services become commodities (iStock is soon to launch a $5 logo site — wut..), we must find new ways to provide value to clients. How do we combat the ever growing "my cousin knows Photoshop" epidemic? Is it up to us to raise consumer awareness on what really is good design and why it's worth their cash?

I'm all for do-it-yourself, but sometimes our "Me" attitude seems to do more harm than good. Beyond simply embracing genuinely good craft, storytelling, and the like, it's also important to place trust in those whom we respect and deem experts at what they do. And to become experts at something ourselves, so that we may return that favor to others. It's a delicate balance of give and take, of confidence and humility. Mr. Kimball, again, may have said it best:

"Google ‘broccoli casserole' and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks."

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We've had the privilege to work with Catalyst Conference over the past year and last week attended their main conference in Atlanta.  One of the most memorable moments of the event was when Professor Splash set a world record by diving into a 1 foot of water in a kiddie pool from 35 ft 9 inches in the air.

What blew me away was right before he jumped, the host asked him how he was doing.  His reply was simple, "Petrified".  He has done jumps like this hundreds of times and broken several world records and said that each time he is petrified.  There was something comforting and inspiring about that for me.  We have a tendency to think that those that do great things in this world, like break crazy world records, are born with this innate ability to avoid fear.  But Professor Splash proves the opposite is true.  He is petrified everytime he does a jump like this.  But he somehow musters up the courage to do it anyway.

We talk a lot about courage around our office.  Whenever we are working with an executive team on a rebranding process, there is always an element of fear.  Fear of doing the wrong thing.  Fear of failure.  Fear of losing market share to competitors.  It's easy to shoot for average and let greatness go to someone else.

But it takes courage to follow your heart.  Courage to make long term decisions. Courage to act on your beliefs instead of merely chasing another dollar. Courage to stay focused on what your brand really stands for and what your company can be the best in the world at.

Thank you Professor Splash for inspiring me to take bold steps in the face of my fears.

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"Meaning not money is the new currency of business." -Marty Neumeier

There are two types of brands, Chaotic and Charismatic.

Everyone has a brand. Admit it or not, if you have a product, service, or organization you have a brand. So, the question is, which one do you have?

AChaotic Brand is a product, service, or organization that lacks focus, differentiation, and owns nothing in the mind of the consumer. There is little alignment between its core purpose, product offering, and brand identity (the visual expression of the brand). It could easily be replaced in the market with little to no grieving.

Charismatic Brand is a product, service, or organization for which people believe there's no substitute. There is a solid alignment of brand ideals. Internal stakeholders know the vision and have buy-in. The look and feel of the brand, not only the logo, is distinctive and consistent. If the brand didn't exist tomorrow, people would border-line riot in the streets until it returned or was replaced. The brand has enough true believers to make it #1 or #2 in its market.








Which of these do you think are Charismatic Brands? (There are no right answers, its all about YOUR gut feeling)



SHELL                       MARRIOTT               APPLE                PHILIPS
BMW                         POLAROID               BP                       GOOGLE
CLUB MED               IKEA                         ATITALIA              NESTLE
TWITTER                  SAP                          ZARA                   MCKINSEY
SMART                     DHL                          PRINTEMPS        CROCS
PEPSI-COLA            AVTOVAZ                 UBS                      DISNEY
GE                            MUJI                         HITACHI               BLACKBERRY
SAFEWAY                 MINI                         SUBWAY              KPMG
MR. DONUT             PRADA                     HYATT                  NISSAN

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"Amazon has cut the price of the Kindle by $100 over the past six months to $259. As e-readers proliferate and price disparities narrow, manufacturers are now trying to differentiate their products by adding features such as MP3 players and touch screens. Fremont, Calif.-based Foxit's eSlick allows users to listen to songs while reading. Asustek recently unveiled a prototype e-reader with two screens, which would more closely duplicate the traditional reading experience, although the device the company expects to release later this year will have a single screen."

Read the whole article here

Amazon.com may be first on the scene when it comes to mainstream e-readers but they might also be first to die. The Kindle is a good product and by all branding principles a focused brand, electronic books. But is it too focused for its own good? Does Amazon.com really have a chance in the consumer gadget marketplace?

The Kindle which debuted in 2007 is the not the first e-reader. Sony, Palm and others have had devices available for some time. The Kindle's competitive advantage has been their online marketplace and the Amazon.com brand. Amazon.com owns that spot in our brain for buying books online. So it doesn't seem that far off to offer a device that can read those online books. Over the past 2 years they have become increasingly popular, proving it worth the investment. You can even buy/download new books over a free wireless network. A great focused product and service.

But here come the 49ers! Big technology and software manufactures like Sony, Apple and Microsoft looking for their own nugget of gold. All of them offering their own feature rich, touch screen, app-etizing, OS operating, life altering devices. Oh… and with e-books too. How is the Kindle as a gadget going to compete with the guys who made the iPod and iPhone? Amazon.com is an online gadget marketplace not manufacturer.

Not sure, time will tell. They may just be kindling for the tablet PC. Perhaps the big indicator will be what they do with their competitive advantage. Their online marketplace is like the iTunes store for the iPod and iPhone. Depending on agreements with book publishers they could have the only gas station for miles. Then again it might be in their best interest to simply be the source for e-book purchases, no matter what the device. This would seem to be more in line with their brand as I see it. But then I don't really read books.

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hu-bris [hyoo-bris, hoo-] –noun
excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.

We had the privilege of helping our friends over at Catalyst put together several pieces this year, including the event website & main attendee notebooks. They invited us to be a part of their main event yesterday and we came away with a lot to process.

One of my favorite moments was hearing from Malcolm Gladwell – author of Tipping Point, Blink, & most recently Outliers. Through several historical antidotes and research, he walked us through one main point: that leaders and experts do not become better knowing more. He asked the question, “Experts make mistakes…Why?..What causes people who are really good to do things that are really dumb?” [he did make one caveat to that point - we are talking about people that are experts and leaders, so general competence is assumed].

Here are a few of his more profound excerpts:

“Excessive information leads to overconfidence.”

“Incompetence is irritating but overconfidence is dangerous.”

“When you are overconfident, the world around you changes — but you don’t see it.”

And his cumulative point…

“In times of crisis we think we need bold and daring leadership – but we don’t; what we need from leaders in times of crisis is humility.”

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This week chefs, shadetree home cooks, and designers around the country will mourn. Condé Nast announced that it plans to close Gourmet (amongst other publications including Modern Bride and Cookie), which has been published since 1940. The news is quite affecting though not very surprising, especially considering the general direction in which the print medium is headed. And here's the kicker: a major factor that led to the downfall of Gourmet was it's low advertising-to-content ratio.

Newspapers and magazines are folding at an alarming rate. E-readers like the Kindle will help speed up the demise of books. Corporate collateral, brochures, annual reports, and the like are moving online. There are a myriad of driving forces behind this trend — lower production cost, less waste, updateability, etc. The world is moving faster now; it's difficult for these things to remain static. But while efficiencies can be gained, it's hard for me to not be sentimental about the situation as a whole.

There was something nice about the "slow world." A deeper sense of substance, value, and permanence that can't quite be duplicated in digital form. It's hard to argue against the efficiencies of an e-book versus a traditional book, because what I'm trying to defend is largely subjective and intangible. Things like texture, heft, beauty, or even smell. Waiting for the release of a new music album was an event. The long wait, the anticipation made it that much more enjoyable when you listened to it the first time. Now pretty much everything is leaked beforehand, downloads are instant, and even song names are hard to remember because you don't sit and read the liner notes while putting the record on repeat. Monthly magazine subscriptions just seem to take too long to arrive, when you can get a-hundred-times the amount of information instantly. Instant gratification has spoiled us.

Not that it will all disappear for good. But it is likely that the print medium will be confined to a higher-end, low production market — specialty items like limited edition vinyl records, expensive letterpress invitations, niche magazines and zines, "farm to table" restaurants that the average person can't afford to eat at regularly.

Progress is good. But I see negative social, cultural and even environmental ramifications if we continue down the path of the disposable lifestyle. Sure, we sacrificed trees for print, but we also consumed far less before and there was a far greater appreciation for those trees. Higher quality goods (remember the over-engineered cars of yesterday?) would last pretty much forever.

Maybe all isn't lost yet. It's not that we have to shift into reverse, we just need to slow down. Let's bring value back into what we produce. Let's appreciate the value in what others create. Let's consume less, but better. Let's give craft a chance to make a comeback.

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I've been watching tweets all night from everyone I know telling their stories about being at the U2 concert at the Georgia Dome tonight, and it got me thinking about what it is that brings people together.  Why is it that half of the people I know spent their hard earned money to go down to see U2 tonight?  What is it about U2?

Is it the vocal abilities of Bono?  The crazy delay effects that the Edge experiments with?  The great musicianship of Adam Clayton or Larry Mullen?

I don't think so.

Is it the songwriting abilities?  The fact that they have so many hit songs to play?  The great artwork from their albums?

I don't think so.

Is it the sound quality at the Dome?  The showmanship of the Bono?  The amazing stage setup?

I don't think so.

Now, all of the above statements are true.  They are great musicians with a long history of great albums and the put on an amazing show.  But it's more than that.

It's about a belief in something way bigger than yourself.  It's about living with passion, meaning, and purpose.  U2 has always exemplified those qualities in their craft, their careers and their personal lives.

So why is it that we so often operate our businesses in fear of the dollar?  We don't spend nearly enough time defining those things that make us: our values, our vision for the future, our core beliefs.

Brand Identity starts with these things.  The beliefs, passions, vision, and values.  A logo with no heart means nothing.  It only means as much as what stands behind it.

Ask yourself today why you do what you do.  Is it for a payday?  Or is it because of a belief in something bigger.  Much bigger.  Something that may draw a crowd one day.  Not because of you, but because of the cause for which you believe in and proclaim to the world.

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My goals for this blog:

1. Stress the importance of setting goals

2. Encourage you to implement goals more often in project based engagements

3. Use an image of a hockey player (b/c somehow we've managed to neglect hockey analogies)

Ok, the third one is not true, but the first two are incredibly accurate. I believe you can't state goals enough. Maybe, it's my ISTJ Myers-Briggs profile, but I think goals are the ultimate form of expectation management, which is everything when juggling multiple stakeholders in a project. I was recently encouraged to ALWAYS present a list of agreed upon goals before a presentation for a client, and since then I've noticed a few things. The presentations are always better! I think it changes the tone. It gives a common-ground platform to leap from. It shows a co-creation, which is super important for creating harmony. It also allows straying conversations to be put back on the tracks with the simple question, "Does that accomplish our intended goal?".

If you are about to embark on a new project, set goals. Get buy-in from everyone involved and keep all tasks "on-goal". It's a simple way to bring focus and common ground to any type of project.

What's the ideal number of goals to set?

(You can't have to many and lose the element of focus, but can't have too few and lose benchmarks)

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It's hard for me to admit this but slowly and surely I am being converted to more "natural" foods. Over the past few years I've been discovering that what I'm eating, may not be what I ordered. There's this behind the scenes stuff like chemicals, preservatives and pesticides, processes and additives. Things that make food greener, bigger, jucier, tastier. There's the treatment of animals, grass-fed vs. corn fed beef. Even the distance food travels to get to my local grocery store.

I'm finally beginning to see the value. Fresh organic stuff costs a little more and it's hard for those of us who just eat because we're hungry to see the benefit in a $4 gallon of milk over a $2 gallon. Both are white and taste about the same to me. But what I'm finding out is that my expectations of what milk ought to cost may be way off. The fact that I can get a double cheeseburger for $1 has got to have some consequences. Maybe the cow (now my burger) had a pretty inhumane life before he ended up next to my fries. Maybe my burger isn't really an all meat patty. Maybe I'm contributing to my own rising healthcare costs.

This is all new stuff for me, a reality check. I think it is for a lot of folks. And the ones who apparently "know the truth" feel obligated to share it with those who don't. Out of concern, for sure, and the hope that by knowing the truth others might change their own eating habits.

Here's the tie in. My movement toward eating healthier isn't happening because of advertising. It's more personal and trustworthy. With friends as teachers, I know their only agenda is my well being. And thats the key. Our lives are over saturated with advertising. We know the game. Too good to be true always ends with fine print. To really effect change, suggestions have to come from a trusted source. One believer leads to another…leads to another…and so on.

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