A simple idea – steward the momentum.

Momentum can keep ideas alive. Business critical ideas. Ideas that will drive innovation, develop new business practices, and engage customers in compelling ways. Ideas that drive profits.

Being a steward of that momentum can look like several things:

• Quickly moving from ideation to a plan of action.
• Building a plan that is challenging, but also realistic.
• Prioritizing.
• Making sure time and budget constraints are addressed.
• Breaking up the action items over a period of time, even if its a year+ (a realistic plan that takes some time is better than an aggressive plan that results in little execution).
• Celebrating milestones!

Momentum is hard to manufacture, and even harder to move forward without.

The U.S. dollar, British pound, euro, & Japanese yen were the only former currencies to have the same feature.

New countries write constitutions and symbolize their new direction with a flag. I never considered how important – and what a differentiator – it was to have our dollar symbol.

I love how much the development of this symbol is inspirational for the people of India:

“With this, India will join an elite group of countries which have a distinct currency symbol. It denotes the robustness of Indian economy,” noted India’s Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Ambika Soni.

“[It is] a way of saying we are entering into the realm of the developed world,” says Harish Bijoor, a brand and business strategy consultant in Bangalore.

Its a simple move, but a meaningful one for the people of India.

Articles referenced from Fast Company & Brand Channel.

Their Open Happiness campaign commercials always ended with a simple, subtle riff referred to as their “Sonic Logo”. Pretty cool. But then consider that they used the melody as a flexible system for a global campaign – a melody that varied based on country and even time of year. And most recently they took the sound to a whole new level by incorporating it into K’naan’s World Cup Anthem.

You gotta watch and listen to this one to feel the breadth of what they accomplished with a few simple notes:

Amazing.

• Riding in a BMW. Or borrowing Alvin’s.
• The feeling I get when I see Fat Tire in my fridge.
• The sounds my Wii makes when I’m navigating through the menu options.
• The DreamWorks intro before one of their movies begins.
• The look on my wife’s face when we walk into Anthropologie.
• The feeling of my iPhone in the palm of my hand.
• Ordering Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke.
• Seeing the red Netflix envelope in my mailbox.
• Sleeping on a bed at the W.
• Interacting with a Chick-fil-A employee.
• Earning enough SkyMiles on my AmEx to get a free plane ticket.

Love to hear what some of your favorite brand experiences are.

When I started this internship at the beginning of the month, I was given some assigned reading. The first book on the list was Zag by Marty Neumeier. If I had to narrow this book down to one line, it would be, “When everyone else zigs, zag.”  Neumeier does a great job at explaining how companies too often align themselves with other companies, which will lead consumers to think of these other brands rather than their own.

Being an Advertising major, I’m applying this concept to a recent advertising campaign for motor oil that grabbed my attention. Motor oil giant Quaker State launched a new ad campaign featuring a short, simple tagline: “Real. Durable. Oil.” Initially, when I sat down to write this post, I could not for the life of me remember what motor oil company this ad campaign was for, or even the second and third words in the slogan! So how in the world did I forget that easy phrase and the motor oil brand that it represented? Three words: “Real. Comfortable. Jeans.” The Quaker State ad did nothing for me except reinforce the old Wrangler Jeans ads featuring Brett Favre playing pickup football. I couldn’t find the Quaker State commercial, but I did find the tagline in an online ad.

Am I the only one who reads the Quaker State tagline and thinks Wranglers?

So it’s obvious that a motor oil brand needs to differentiate themselves from their direct competitors in the car maintenance industry. To me, though, it doesn’t end there. I believe that if you proclaim your brand’s message through advertising, you can’t allow people like myself to think of ANY other brand except yours, whether it’s a competitor or not. You don’t want your motor oil ad dollars going toward me having denim on my mind. Instead, you have to do what Neumeier says: “Be different. No, REALLY DIFFERENT.“

I believe the business type is less indicative of greatness than the ability for a business owner to execute that business with greatness.

Imagine I am starting a business that will sell blank, plain tshirts. Sounds boring, like maybe I might end up becoming Hanes. Then I go even further and decide I want to target 20-somethings. Sounds destined for failure without jazzing up the offering. Like maybe I should be printing ‘cool’ graphics on the t’s.

Now consider what American Apparel created with their brand of plain t’s for hipsters.

D.I.Y furniture (IKEA), simple burgers & fries (Five Guys), lip balm (Burt’s Bees), coupons (Scoutmob).

It seems a business type is not nearly as important as the uniqueness and greatness by which the business type is executed and experienced.

I love what Time’s managing editor said, “I’m a big believer that nothing ever actually goes away. People still make pottery, write epic poetry. Beautiful print magazines will always exist. But you’ll have a lot of different options to get Time’s content.”

Even so, print is a dying breed. And yet somehow Time managed to post $40 mil in profits last year.

How did they manage to pull this off?

According to another of their editors, its the discpline of saying “No”,

“The discipline has always been, not what do you cover, but what do you not cover. It has always been an exercise in ignoring things…in saying that’s not important enough, or that’s not interesting enough, or that’s not surprising enough.”

And they go further than just saying “No”. They’ve also defined how to determine when to say “Yes”,

“We convert information into knowledge. Knowledge is what people want. Information is the commodity.”

Discipline plus distinction is a hard combo to beat.

Business is changing…constantly. So how – like Time – do you move at the speed of business while keeping a focus that keeps you not just alive & relevant, but growing?

Figuring out the yesses & noes isn’t easy.

For more, check out the story at NPR.

Imagination is a thing of beauty. And even with its ‘difficult to harness and hone in‘ qualities, its at the core of so much of what we love and why we do what we do. We’re imagining a future, and then designing it.

Every now and then an ad campaign really sparks something imaginative that I love. And this Dodge World Cup ad is a definite candidate.

Its bold, creative, and I love the language: “There are a couple things America got right. Freedom. And cars“.

I just got excited about American cars again. Bravo.

I love this thing. It reminds me of a classic diner and an iPad all rolled in one. And its said to revolutionize a platform that no one really knew could be that interesting – fountain drink dispensers.

Coke created an experience that will provide an entirely new opportunity for exposure to their products – and for much more than their traditional product line-up alone. These dispensers offer 104 flavor options to choose from.

Instead of creating a business plan on how to get more of their brand’s offering in front of customers, they completely revolutionized the segment. They just made fountain drinks fun again.

Now what will Pepsi do?

I traveled to Houston over the Memorial Day holiday to visit friends. My first time to the city – third time to the state. I knew it was home to Whataburger, Big Oil and boots, but beer was not the thing that came to mind when I thought of visiting the megapolis.

Saint Arnold Beer. A brewery founded and flourishing in Texas since 1994. A microbrewery whose entire focus is making and delivering not just a handcrafted, but also incredibly fresh beer. Fresh is key for St. Arnold’s – on average they’re getting beer into the hands of consumers a mere 3 days after being brewed. Its on purpose and on-brand.

Their focus doesn’t stop there. In addition to fresh they intentionally deliver their beer to Texans, and Texans only. They are Texas born and bred and and don’t plan on taking their product anywhere else. Its part of their Identity, and is visibly part of their passion.

Their brewery was a great place to visit – full of folks hanging out for the afternoon with picnic lunches in-hand and taps pumping out the good stuff for the small price of a $7 entry fee.

I’ll miss the opportunity to have it back home in Atlanta – but I’ll also be looking forward to having it again the next time I visit.

Passionate fans, focus, and a growing enterprise. All outcomes I’d wager are tied not just to a great product, but also a result of their decision to brand regionally.