9 Criteria for Establishing Brand Essence

1. Focus: Find one or two words that define the brand. Deliver a unique experience, and document what it is you want to evoke.

2. Feeling: Describe what it is you want a consumer to feel when he/she comes into contact with your brand.

3. Individuality: In these communities, brands are people, too, and necessary to stand alone. The key here is uniqueness and charm.

4. Experiential: When a consumer experiences a product or service, what is the encounter eliciting?

5. Consistency: What a brand conveys now and every day. It is also a call to ensure that the brand team is structured in a way that allows it to deliver as promised.

6. Credibility: Aligning the brand essence with experiences and righting the course of engagement and transformation when necessary. (This is discussed further in Chapter 15).

7. Longevity: Is the essence designed to last, something that can stand the test of time, and patient regardless of medium?

8. Personal: Something personal that people aspire to embrace and be a part of; something that speaks to them.

9. Portable: A strong understanding of how emotion is transferable across networks.

The GPS Guide to the Teenage Brain was recently featured in the news n conjunction with a report on marijuana use in Marion County.

Read the Original News Story 

I love this article posted by Martin Lindstrom on the Branding Strategy Insider. It is all about getting REAL. Let’s get REAL with our BRANDS. Make them authentic, let them make mistakes and react like a REAL person. Nobody likes a phony brand image and we all know what those look like. This goes for corporate brands, small business brands, service brands and personal brands. I love imperfect brands just like I love imperfect people — who are not afraid to admit it. Get REAL with your brand!

Source: Martin Lindstrom, Branding Strategy Insider

Is perfect branding really the best way of building brands? Up until recently this might have been true. Asking Martha Stewart fans they would have agreed with me. Year after year the ever-perfect Martha was dishing up one perfect decoration advice after another. And yes they were really perfect – but repeating this session decade after decade made one mistake look so much more dramatic than if the brand Martha would have conducted mistakes, purposely or not, through the years just like us “ordinary” human beings.

And this brings me to the point. I’m a big believer in the fact that the ultimate brand is like a real person. Needless to say no brand hardly reaches a stage where people perceive it as being a real person, but the fact is, that the more human components we associate a brand with, typically the stronger the brand is.

The times where I’ve been most amazed about a brand have often been where it did something human. Where the service was extraordinarily good – and had a “real” human touch. The cases where the emails I received as a reply on my question sent either in anger or just in curiosity – reflected that a real person, of real human blood – actually were answering my email. But not only that – that the writing – reflected that this person had the authority to be a true individual, either in the tone-of-voice, the writing style…you name it. You see as customers we expect a brand to deliver on expectations. It’s a minimum standard to expect a brand to answer back, often within 24 hours. But if the reply is everything but standard, if it had that special “glimpse in the eye” it added extra brand equity to my brand – perhaps making it my favourite brand.

But making this possible requires a human behaviour.

I just read this article written on the Harvard Business Review Blog by Tony Schwartz: Link

Essentially this is not real new news, but I need to keep reminding myself again and again on these common sense facts on what it takes to be excellent:

• We are what we repeatedly do.
• It is not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we are willing to work.
• Push past your comfort zone to get really good.

Here are the six keys to achieving excellence from the article

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them—build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

I wish I could be so disciplined to follow this advice. I think they are forgetting to mention the obvious—invest your time. I think the hardest part is ‘getting out the door’ for whatever practice it is.

Finally an article supporting the notion of being a generalist, not a specialist. So many consultants say that to be successful you must be specialized. I cringe every time I hear that.

I can’t imagine doing the same task every day or working in the same market every day. My specialty is branding and marketing and that I thrive on the variety that comes at me every day. Thank you to Mindy, the author of this article.

Re-posted from webdesignerdepot.com, click here to read original article

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Robert A. Heinlein

It seems that the topic of specialization has come into focus yet again in the web world and with it, the people who say being a “jack of all trades” is a useless thing to strive for.

A lot of web professionals are pushing newcomers to specialize in a single area to make themselves more marketable and employable. Without a doubt, specialists will always be needed in any industry. But is it really so bad to be a web generalist?

Being considered a “jack of all trades” has always had a negative connotation. It implies that you dabble in bits of everything, but never achieve the expertise needed to be good at any one pursuit.

Maybe a successful generalist should instead be considered a “Renaissance man” (or woman).

Few would argue that DaVinci should have stuck to one subject.

Speaking From Experience

Ok, so I’m not DaVinci. Despite my lack of genius, being a Jack has worked well for me.

I’ve always worked with small teams where being flexible and willing to learn was seen as a huge asset. I wouldn’t call myself a generalist, per se, but I wouldn’t call myself a specialist either.

Web design is my primary passion. It’s what I spend the most energy practicing and perfecting. Still, I spend a good chunk of time learning front end development techniques and reading up on user experience principles to make sure my designs are more than just pretty pictures.

I’ve project managed, created databases, produced wireframes and IA documents, and written copy for marketing pieces. I even built a few ColdFusion and PHP sites back in the day that I’m sure would haunt me to look at now.

I’ve worked with over a dozen CMS products in a plethora of languages. I’ve designed everything from magazine layouts to environmental graphics. Some of what I produced might be pretty bad – like the database I built with a book in one hand to walk me through the process step-by-step, but I filled a gap, solved a problem and learned a lot in the process.

Being adaptable has earned me quite a few raises and promotions. I’ve been told time and time again that I’m a valuable team member precisely because I know a little bit about all aspects of the web process.

It has also allowed me to take on interesting freelance projects that I can call mine from start to finish. It makes my design work more informed because I know exactly how hard it will be to make that one little thingamajig look good in IE6.

And it’s easier for me to relate to the woes of a developer frustrated by a coding bug, or a project manager trying desperately to make a customer happy, which makes me a better teammate.

It Works For Some…

Being a generalist works for me, but it won’t work for everyone. There are a few reasons I think I’ve had success with it. They include:

Endless Curiousity
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and have started to work with my nature instead of against it.

I’m a very curious person. I have trouble focusing on a single subject because everything seems so interesting to me. I have a broad arsenal of skills gathered over the years thanks to my curious nature. If I forced myself to pick a specialty and stick to it, I’d be incredibly bored and for me, boredom is misery.

A Love Of Learning
I truly enjoy learning new things. I could hate a subject and still enjoy the process of learning about it. It’s fun for me to sit down and research a new technique or test out a style I haven’t mastered yet. If it wasn’t fun for me, I wouldn’t want to spend so much free time doing it.

A Deep-Seated Need For Control
Let’s be honest… I’m a control freak. I learned a lot of what I know so I wouldn’t have to ask someone else to do it for me. I got good at front end development because I wasn’t happy with how programmers missed small nuances when building out my designs, for example.

The old adage often holds true – if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. My vision of “right” and someone else’s are often very different.

Even when I don’t have time to do something myself, knowing that it can be done (and how to do it) gives me a lot of leverage.

But Not For All.

If you need to know every single detail about how something works before you’re satisfied, or if you don’t like bouncing from subject to subject, you’re probably not cut out to be a generalist.

And many people don’t enjoy the learning process – instead, they enjoy putting their skills to work each day and moving closer and closer toward perfecting those skills.

Know yourself. Work with what you’ve got and keep yourself happy.

Making It Work

To really be successful, I suggest you strike a balance between generalist and specialist.

Be really great at one thing, but decently good at several other things related to it. Be a great designer with a solid background in user experience and SEO, or a fantastic front end dev who can do light backend coding and pull together a decent layout.

Your primary work will improve because of the secondary knowledge you pick up. And whether you freelance or work for a company, you will be a more valuable resource.

Go beyond “enough to be dangerous”. Know enough to talk fluently with someone who is a specialist in that area. This way you will be able to identify problems, taking care of minor ones and communicating bigger issues to the right specialists. You can be the person who sees the big picture and understands how all the parts interrelate.

In general, Jacks are best suited to small teams, management positions, or freelancing.

Small teams will appreciate your flexibility and are usually thrilled to see you tackle extra things that aren’t in your job description.

A bigger company means more toes to step on, so your eagerness might not be well received. And with larger teams you tend to see a high degree of specialization and less opportunity to try out different roles.

If you are already in a big company, a management or “big picture” position could keep you from feeling boxed in. People higher up the ladder need a broader range of skills to keep their teams interconnected.

Freelancing can be a great option if you’re business-oriented. You get to pick the projects that fit into your interests, so you will always have chances to stretch your skill set and learn new things.

Be Proud

If you do it right, being a jack of all trades should be considered a strength.

Your ability to adapt to a business’s needs will be highly sought after. There is no reason to feel that this is an inferior path.

Generalists bring much-needed balance to the workplace and make communication across disciplines a lot easier.

So go ahead…. ignore the over-specialized masses and keep learning!

Even if you are not a designer, you can train yourself to think like one. Doing this will help you critique layouts presented to you for your opinion or approval.

Flex Your Design Muscle – A Few Exercises

Here are a few suggestions to train your brain to think like a designer . . .

1. Start a design folder or binder to keep samples of ideas you like. This helps you wake up and become more alert. I often get inspiration from designs I notice in totally different markets than the one I am working on. You don’t have to like everything – notice the details. You may like a font, a color scheme, a style of writing, a photo treatment or even the way the paper folds.
2. Analyze your junk mail every day, then explain why you hate it or love it. Keep the ones you really like.
3. While grocery shopping study the cereal boxes. The large packaged goods companies (Kelloggs, Kraft/Nabisco, General Mills) spend big bucks on their packaging. Get some ideas from the pros. See how they prioritize the information and use bold graphics to highlight and catch the consumer’s  attention.
4. Start paying close attention to billboards, signage, invitations, and even instruction manuals. See how they pick the design elements to appeal to their target audience and to create a strong brand image.

Your brain will quickly start to recognize great design that has clearly taken considerable creative time and thought. You will also notice poorly designed materials, that will make you think “Who approved that?” By having a well trained ‘design brain’ you will improve the look and and messaging of you own materials.

Start exercising your brain today!

I am a “Raving Fan” of Seth Godin’s book “Linchpin” and I have recommended it to many clients and many college students who are about to start their careers. The world has changed, and is continuing to change very rapidly. This book shifts your mindset on the way we do business and how to can manage your own career by making yourself distinctive. This is the new school of thinking for future leaders.

It was fun to be part of Seth’s brilliant, grass roots, tech driven, unconditional book launch. Seth offered advanced copies of Linchpin to the first 3,000 people who donated $30 to the Acumen Fund. I bought a copy — or, rather, I donated to the Acumen Fund and Seth sent me his book before it hit the shelves in stores. I thought that was brilliant, but here’s the kicker – - about 2 months after I received my book he send me a second copy to pass on to a friend. Now, that is impressive! Can you see why I am a Raving Fan of Seth Godin?

I follow his daily blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/and I encourage all creative thinking business people to join me!

From The 60 Second Marketer Blog

I became a huge fan of Seth Godin after reading TRIBES. He written several other bestselling business books such as Meatball Sundae, The Dip, Small Is the New Big, The Big Moo, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside, Survival Is Not Enough, Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus and, The Big Red Fez.

His latest Book, Linchpin is a work of marketing genius right from the pre-launch.

He walks the ‘write’. He has created a new formula for authors to spread the word, gain exposure and grow a tribe of raving fans of a new book.
In a blog post this morning, Seth Godin drew attention to his as-yet-to-be-released book called Linchpin. At the same time, he drew attention to the Acumen Fund, a non-profit that helps grow small businesses that serve the poor around the globe.

Seth’s idea was to provide advanced copies of Linchpin to the first 3,000 people who donated $30 to the Acumen Fund. (Yes, I bought a copy — or, rather, I donated to the Acumen Fund and Seth is going to send me a copy of the book as a bonus.)

This is a great idea on several fronts:

It builds awareness for the Acumen Fund.
It builds awareness for Linchpin.
It positions Seth Godin as a man with a big brain (you knew that) and a big heart (you may not have known that).
It fulfills Seth’s point of view that books are just a small component of a mix of “souvenirs” that people buy to connect with their favorite Thought Leaders.
All this has been particularly interesting for me to watch because:

I’m currently writing a soon-to-be-published book on Social Media with Dr. Reshma Shah from Emory University, and
Dr. Shah and I help run A School Bell Rings, a non-profit that builds schools for impoverished children around the globe.
The big take-away on all this is that people want to connect with brands that have added value above-and-beyond the stated value.

Said another way, people want to buy products (whether that product is Seth Godin or a widget) that are connected to larger, bigger, more important issues like ending poverty, building schools or providing clean water in third world countries.

Seth Godin does it. Does your brand? If not, it should.

An excerpt from one of my new favorite business books, TRIBES by Seth Godin.

“Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.”

I found these tips while checking my Twitter. Zeke Camusio has a Blog full of great tips and advise about Internet Marketing and Entrepreneurship at The Outsourcing Company. http://www.theoutsourcingcompany.com/blog/

3 Killer Social Media Marketing Tactics

Tactic #1: Find Out Who’s Talking About You and Your Product and Engage in the Conversation

1. Set up BuzzStream with your name and keywords (e.g. “back pain”, “natural healing”, etc.)
2. You’ll get alerts every time someone talks about you or the stuff you offer.
3. Go there and engage in the conversation.

This tactic rocks! You find people who need what you have and help them. That’s what Social Media Marketing is all about.

BuzzStream is a paid tool ($49/month). If you want a free alternative, use Google Alerts, but you won’t get the same great results.

Tactic #2: Share Someone Else’s Content
Most people freak out over Social Media Marketing because they don’t have the time to write 100 articles and shoot 100 videos. It’s OK. Be a “resource sharer”. Those resources don’t need to be yours. If you come across videos and articles that your audience might find useful, share that stuff with them.

Tactic #3: Schedule Your Posts
Facebook and Twitter use timelines. The rest of the networks are moving to that kind of layout too. In case you don’t know what a timeline is, this is the short definition: a list of posts from the members of your network displayed in chronological order (from newer posts to older ones).

If you tweet 10 times between 2pm and 3pm, someone who follows a lot of people might not see your tweets if he checks his Twitter profile at 5pm, because many of his friends will post stuff after you, moving your posts down.

This is what you can do to prevent this from happening: schedule your posts. If you have 50 resources you want to share, schedule them to get posted every hour or two. HootSuite.com allows you to do this.