What is a Brand?

It Is SO Easy To Create a Personal Brand These Days...

From November 23, 2007

Last summer was extremely busy for me. Richard Carey and I teamed up once again at Right Management teaching branding workshops to executives in transition. In other words, we were showing middle managers and C-Suite executives the basics of branding themselves using today's online technology. Web 2.0 open source sites are free and allow even a techno novice the ability to build their online credibility with sites such as Wordpress, EzineArticles, Blogger, YouTube, etc...

We based most of our work on an article that appeared in Fast Company magazine: A Brand Called You by Tom Peters. The implication was that personal brands would become the hot new wave for talented individuals to start branding themselves for greater employment and consulting opportunities. Using our own entrepreneurial experiences, and the fact that Richard and I launched some very successful online brands, we were the obvious experts to teach the seminars.

Our approach was simple. Start with your resume. Take out everything that didn't support your core competency, get focused on exactly which category you fit in, get your elevator speech down pat, and launch from there. Graphic design 101 was part of the seminar including migration to the online universe. We used the same techniques as major corporations.

It was a simple set of instructions. A few hours each night could build one's online resume, an archive of articles, or a small diary of web logs. Why create such online content? With Google becoming the dominant search engine tool, employers are turning to its abilities more and more to weed out the bad apples. Many a student complained that they were Googled as soon as they left the office. This makes online credibility paramount to managing where your resume lands. Either at the top of the heap or in the circular file. "Don't call us, we'll call you" can be turned into "Can you come in for a second interview" with just a few hours each night. Creating your online dossier is easy.

That's why I asked myself why
no one was doing it?

Everybody who took our seminars filled out their feedback form with glowing recommendations for us. But no one was running out to take action on what we just showed them. And then it dawned on me: in every seminar, the branding part seemed to leave most just nodding their heads in agreement. They understood that their business card, resume and online presence had to have the same look and feel, but was it possible that no one really knew what a brand was? Had I done my job well enough in explaining a brand? Perhaps not...

My writing is not so much to pontificate, but to give practical steps for entrepreneurs who may be launching their own companies or executives who need one piece of wisdom to complete their knowledge base. Since I speak only from experience, keep what you like and discard the rest. So the purpose of this article is to go back to basics and explore what a brand is and what branding is all about.

The best definition of a brand I could find is...

"A distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, word, sentence, or a combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others in the market."

This definition is only half of the story. The reality is a brand is much more than a symbol - it is the experience one gets from using a product or service. How does this help you? To understand some more, let's walk through a little bit of history.

Brands themselves can be traced back to their modern use in the Old West. Cattle ranchers as well as horse traders needed to mark their animals permanently with a symbol that determined ownership. They had blacksmiths design intricate logos that represented each rancher's initials or company insignia.

Burning their emblem into the flesh of the animal determined ownership. Eventually over time some brands of livestock became more popular than others. So, when a particular rancher brought in his beef for sale, his reputation came with it. Lesser brands couldn't get the price for their livestock that the better brands could command. The buyers paid on repeat business and reputation.

It was the first use of brand recognition. The power of the symbol represented the reputation of the brand.

Since stealing horses was a felony punishable by death, brands were taken very seriously. Ranchers fiercely protected their brand so others couldn't copy the design. Copyright infringement law didn't really exist in the western territories yet, so keeping their branding irons locked up and out of sight became the norm.

But branding goes back even further. The history of modern brands reads like a Dan Brown novel, but, you probably wouldn't recognize them as brands. A golden sun symbol in Iran from 1400 BC was revitalized again in Rome, representing the sun-god Mithra. Eventually Emperor Constantine would fuse the sun god's symbol of Mithra (of which he was the grand master) with the Christian cross to create his brand. The golden sun with a cross in the center on a blazing red shield became a symbol to fear during the Byzantine period of Roman/European history.

Or even earlier, Pythia was the high priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Or perhaps the worship of Isis, Baal or any number of cults in the ancient world. Unfortunately branding animals as well as human beings wasn't new. A mark determined ones status as a slave, a conquest of war, or worse, marked for death. Either way, it meant ownership.

The formula for religious cults was simple; create a temple with an image, get people to gather around it and give out the gospel, then get the followers to spread the word. The ancient Greeks called this phenomenon, this worship of a holy word or symbol, Logos, (Used as both a noun and a verb). We use the same theories in today's marketing and branding techniques with out driving our followers over a cliff of course, but the theories are the same.

If you haven't seen Eddie Izzard, shame on you;-) LOL.

As the human race evolved, those brands meant less about ownership and more about who one was aligned with. Flags, hats, and special clothes are a form of branding. It is a quick and easy way for individuals to comprehend and choose sides. "The Red Coats are coming" was about the British Empire and what it meant to live under the "brand" of British rule. No one wanted to be owned by royalty anymore.

Eventually, branding spread from cattle to retail products. One hundred fifty years ago when a man wanted to buy a new razor for his son, he went to a store like Macy's, looked at the display of razors, picked what he wanted and was promptly handed a package wrapped in brown paper and string. Modern packaging didn't exist...partially because printing techniques needed to catch up. People evolved in their sophistication and therefore so did branding. Today we can't imagine buying a product without it's slick packaging enticing us to buy it.

To say branding has become a science is an understatement. Just look around your house and you will see brands everywhere. From the SONY television you bought to the Gillette razor you used this morning. From the Amerige perfume you just can't live without to those Jimmy Choo's your husband bought for your birthday, you and I and everyone in America is a branded consumer. Ironically, each brand has a logo for us to worship and it is getting harder to resist.

Every brand you buy has an emotional reason why you buy it. Why did you buy that Mercedes? It wasn't because you were looking for an economy car. Or how about that new suit? Hugo Boss says you spent a little bit extra to stand out. Paul Mitchell hair care products? What dental care system are you using? Are you brushing like a dentist or are you brushing like everyone else? You have to pay to get this kind of brushing technology. We can't let it fall into the hands of the British.

Great companies remember their name is more than a logo on a napkin, or a JPEG on a website, or a neon sign calling out from interstate 95. It is the relationship you've had with them. This collection of experiences forms an opinion in the consumer's mind that rarely changes. Let me repeat that: your experiences with a brand form an opinion in your mind. Which means it may not be based on truth. It is based on perception. Every great brand knows this and doesn't mess with it until they get into trouble.

Since you are beginning to understand that a brand is more about the experience of using a product than the logo on it, then it stands to reason that creating the experience becomes paramount as people begin to trust their association with your company.

Branding is a huge part of your sales paradigm. Your reputation proceeds you, so why not work hard at creating a great perception?

Starbucks worked hard at developing each store. The leisure environment that invites you to sit down and relax. How about the customized service? You can order their products in over 80,000 different combinations. Everything about the Starbucks experience says you've earned the best cup of coffee in the world. Does Starbucks make the best cup of coffee in the world? Probably not, but you sure as hell feel like it is, and perception is 90% of the sale.

Starbucks also focuses on coffee and coffee finger foods. All cakes, muffins and donuts are at eye level for a quick sale. Anything else is in a case below your waste - Sandwiches, fruit and cheese, bottled water. In other words, Starbucks is focused on one thing: Coffee! Anything that doesn't support coffee never makes it inside the store.

In marketing this is called brand focus and has made the difference for many a company struggling to define what they are. If you are known for many things, your brand may fail. Dropping all services that interfere with your core competency will give your brand a major boost. Companies who do this statistically lose 25% of their clients. But, by focusing the brand companies can increase revenue by 75%!

So get as focused on one category as quickly as possible. After all, do you want to be a jack of all trades or a master of one? Would you go to a doctor who is a generalist or a specialist? I am guessing your answer is the specialist.

If you are confused by categories try this: What is FedEx known for? What is Gillette known for? What is McDonald's known for? Each answer is a simple sentence that tells you what category these brands dominate. Interestingly as well, these three companies are the leader in their categories. They were also the first.

If you are the last to enter a particular market, invent a category. Apple couldn't compete with IBM as a computer company, so they positioned themselves as the personal computer for everybody else. They not only dominate that market, they forced the other manufacturers to follow their lead.

As you launch your new brand, ask yourself these questions:
What experience does the consumer get from interacting with my brand?
How can I make that experience better?
Is the perception true?
Do I own my category?
Can I create a new category?
Is my logo reflective of my product/service?
Should my company be separate from my brand?
Does my brand reflect thematic consistency in my signage, website, and collateral?

Once the consumer has formed an opinion in their minds collectively, it is almost impossible to change it. So be very careful when launching a new product or service. This is why marketing firms get paid so well. They spend months interviewing tens of thousands of people on your new brand and where to position it. Positioning is important, but that is for another article.

Depending on the size of your company I would hire a brand manager who knows all the techniques to create a mega brand. Scott Bedbury comes to mind. He was in charge of a couple of brands you might have heard of; Nike, (he was responsible for the Just Do It! tag line) and Starbucks. His big coup was to increase Starbucks store base from 350 stores to several thousand stores world wide.

That's the power of a top tier brand and marketing manager.

Sometimes I get so used to marketing and branding that I see them as one and the same. But if you want to learn more about how to market your brand, I suggest The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries & Jack Trout. It will help you to understand the science behind building and maintaining a strong brand. I would not start a project until my clients read it from cover to cover. It's an easy read and can be devoured in a weekend. Enjoy!

So get out there and just do it...



Brad

Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant

Author  •  Workshop Facilitator  •  Executive Coach  •  Keynote Speaker

May I suggest these sites and publications?

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

There are laws of nature, so why shouldn't there be laws of marketing?

As Al Ries and Jack Trout—the world-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors of Positioning—note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if you ignore the laws of physics, especially gravity. Why then, they ask, shouldn't there also be laws of marketing that must be followed to launch and maintain winning brands?

In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout offer a compendium of twenty-two innovative rules for understanding and succeeding in the international marketplace. From the Law of Leadership, to The Law of the Category, to The Law of the Mind, these valuable insights stand the test of time and present a clear path to successful products. Violate them at your own risk.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
Smart and accessible, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding, pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, and Heineken, with the signature savvy of marketing gurus Al and Laura Ries. Combining The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, this book proclaims that the only way to stand out in today's marketplace is to build your product or service into a brand—and provides the step-by-step instructions you need to do so.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding also tackles one of the most challenging marketing problems today: branding on the Web. The Rieses divulge the controversial and counterintuitive strategies and secrets that both small and large companies have used to establish internet brands. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the essential primer on building a category-dominating, world-class brand.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/848026

The Pig & The Python: A Long Term Marketing Strategy That Works

When I was a tween, my best friend Dieter called me up and invited me to his house. As soon as I entered he exclaimed out loud, "come...you gotta see this!"

As we raced upstairs and entered his brother Pete's room, there was a small crowd of our buddies from school. Mike, Bret, and now me and Dieter...all pressed against the glass of a small terrarium. And there it was. A tiger snake coiled up about to attack a fresh white mouse.

Okay, some of you are horrified, but how else does someone feed a pet snake?

Yes pet stores frown on this practice, but snake owners rotate stores as to not become suspect. Now back to my story....

With lightening speed, the snake leaped forward biting the terrified mouse. It squeaked and died under the comparatively massive jowls of the Tiger Snake. Slowly, the snake unhinged its jaw, and began to devour the carcass until it was nothing more than a bulge in the body of an orange colored snake.

This digestive action is called peristalsis. You can look it up online but it basically means digestion without teeth. Pure muscular movement of the esophagus, along with digestive juices...well you get the picture. This is how a python can digest a large pig. Over time, the entire pig is digested. It is also why some snakes only feed once a month.

But the concept of this peristaltic movement, The Pig & The Python - is also a marketing term.

I awaited in anticipation to see the remakes of The Green Hornet, True Grit and The Mechanic, I am always reminded of the Pig & The Python by David Cork. Who is ready for The Avengers: Age of Ultron?

As a marketing term, The Pig & The Python is an attempt to take a brand that Baby Boomers grew up with - think Batman, Speed Racer, and Battlestar Galactica - and repackage it with special effects, a story rewrite and a few sequels - and resell it. But here is the peristaltic part: refeed a group of people with something they already know and love, just update it.

But more importantly, get a new generation
hooked on the brand as well.

Boomers drag their kids to these movies...or more importantly, tell stories from the glory days of their childhood. This gets another generation hooked on the same brand. Over and over again. thirty years from now, be on the lookout for a remake of The Transformers, Harry Potter and Pokemon movies.

When trying to find a target audience, keep in mind, a built in audience and the Pig & The Python.

Why do you think they have remade Batman, Superman (and tried to match the Christopher Reeve's version) The Manchurian Candidate, Star Trek, Arthur, Speed Racer, Alice in Wonderland, The Addams Family, etc...or even more amazing is the landslide of all the comic book heroes being reimagined...Iron Man, Spider-Man, Green Lantern and Avengers 3:Age of Ultron.  

All of these remakes are an attempt to bring back the glory days of the Baby Boomer and the brands they grew up with.

Now some of these remakes bomb miserably, like movie remake of the British TV Series also entitled The Avengers. Or The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. Did you see any Speed Racer cartoons out when the Speed Racer movie was about to be released? Or The Avengers TV series with Diana Rigg, or the original Lone Ranger episodes on TV Land? No...The reason is, no one primed the pump to get Boomers excited again to go see the remake. Yet executives at the top wonder why it didn't do so well. Duh.

Try building our anticipation folks.

The Pig & The Python. Keep feeding a brand over and over until it is completely digested.

Cool huh?

Thanks for reading,

Brad Szollose 
Bridging The Generational Divide: Multigenerational management expert, award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker


PS: If you are interested in one of our white papers entitled... 

What Every Business Needs
to Know About Millennials:

Understanding How Technology Transforms Corporate Culture, Generational Behavior, and Impacts Management, Interaction and Expectations 

Email us with your name, title and email address.
Your information is confidential.

Ask me how I can help your company evolve into the 21st Century.

Brad Szollose is the foremost expert on Cross-Generational Issues and Workforce Culture, management consultant and keynote speaker who helps smart companies understand just how much technology has transformed corporate culture, behavior, management interaction, expectations and sales in The Digital Age.



But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.


Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. 

His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Brad Szollose is also the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analog driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.

Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer. 



* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership

* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York

Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea.

Pursuing WOW! The Key to Staying Innovative

While attending a dinner party with my wife, we ran into an old friend. Carl Henry is a successful doctor who opened medical clinics throughout New York and the Caribbean Islands. He did this to give back to life by sponsoring several orphanages. As we chatted about ways to help, Carl gets excited and pulls his smartphone from his briefcase…“Let me show you a few pictures of the facilities we are building for the children.”

And there it was as bright as daylight, a cross between a cell phone and a small computer tablet…Samsung’s Galaxy Note. The entire room lit up in living color with the brightest screen I had even seen. This was beyond impressive, this was a game-changer.

Now I am an Apple fan, but the screen on the Note just blew the doors off of what I had expected. Bigger and brighter, it was 70% larger than an iPhone screen but one-third the size of an iPad. And now I understood why Samsung profits surged 79% last year—their smartphones make you go WOW…that is amazing!

Apple’s iPhone and iPad are starting to look pale compared to The Galaxy line of devices. Samsung even knocked competitor Nokia out of second place in 2012.

Samsung has become a Game Changer in what is now becoming The Smart Phone Wars. But more importantly, Samsung is forcing Apple to pay attention…and adapt.

And that is what business is about in the 21^st Century. Want to decimate a leader in your market sector? Do it better. Do it faster. And get your customer excited. Not just a good idea, or “hey here’s a new feature”…I mean rock your customer’s world with a WOW improvement!

And because they do it better, Apple and Samsung now dominate 90% of the smartphone market! These two giant competitors understand the mindset of today’s customers—a customer that wants the very best from their digital devices, and recession or no recession, willing to pay for it. So why are so many companies forget that?

Let’s take a deeper look into the mobile device sector. At the beginning of 2012, Google finished their acquisition of ailing cell phone manufacturer Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 Billion. It was even worse by the middle of August, Motorola’s executive team announced the elimination of 4,000 jobs and 27 products. That’s right. Twenty-seven products gone. But here is the most amazing part of this…those 27 products were introduced last year!!!

Astoundingly Motorola was the first company to introduce the first commercial cellphone in 1973…so they should have remained a market leader, (those who create the first of anything usually dominate that market). But they fell behind. And when Motorola introduced the Razr they should have had a comeback. So how did they drop the ball? How could they have created over 27 products that were so bad, Google eliminated them?

Motorola forgot to stay innovative.

Getting rid of 27 products that came out one year ago is a bold move, and probably VERY necessary. Someone at Google realized if they didn’t get rid of them they would be out of business soon. It was a painful decision, but brilliant at the same time. They faced the truth.

Too many choices can leave your customers confused. Which one is the best? Which one is affordable yet has the apps I need? Why are their so many choices, I just need one that works. There is an old expression in business that goes like this “want to fail? Try to please everyone all at once.” So 27 products were just not making the cut…boring and a waste of money. Smart business leaders deal with failure quickly.

So what does this have to do with the market leaders Apple and Samsung? By watching their competitors muddle through the process of attempting to be competitive, we see that the leaders are doing it right in 2 ways: 1) They are keeping us excited with every product they make. That’s the WOW factor I talk about. Samsung’s Galaxy products make you go “WOW, THAT is cool!!!” and 2) they never rest on their glory days of the past… customers do not care about your history—they care about what you can give them today. Today Samsung is Wowing us, tomorrow, Apple will Wow us. Keeping pace is necessary in this day and age, otherwise a company can fall so far being they can’t keep up. The Palm Pilot is a lesson in a company that forgot to keep up. But the bigger lesson in comparing failure to success is…

People buy things that get them emotionally excited.
If a product doesn’t stir the emotions,
don’t expect it to sell.

What can I say? It’s that simple. Just think of the products you like…whether it’s a car company, technology, a device or jewelry, each and every product has a certain sex appeal built in. Look at the digital devices we are comparing here.

Samsung products make even non Samsung users stop and ask “I wonder when Apple will build something like that?”

Apple needs to blow our minds again and again to stay relevant in THIS day and age.

Thanks for stopping by,




Brad Szollose
21st Century Change Agent: Generational expert, award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker

Brad Szollose is a much sought-after generational expert, management consultant and keynote speaker who helps smart companies understand just how much technology has transformed corporate culture and behavior… and how that impacts management interaction, expectations and sales in The Digital Age.



But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.


Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. 

His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Brad Szollose is also the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analogue driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.


Liquid Leadership has been called "THE guidebook for the 21st Century" and has won the 2011 Axiom Business Book Award silver medal for leadership, The Indie Business Book runner up silver medal as well as becoming a #1 Best-Selling Business Book on Amazon for Organizational Learning. Published in the United States by Greenleaf Book Group, in India by Prolibris and in South Korea by UI Books/Iljinsa Publishing.

Mr. Szollose also writes a monthly column on business and marketing techniques that reach Generation Y for A Captured Mind newsletter and is part of The Mind Capture Group faculty.

Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer. 



* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership

* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York

Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea.

Why You Need Gen Y Involved in Your Marketing NOW!

As a keynote speaker it is my job to bring some amazing content to every audience. Content that makes people go "REALLY? I did not know that..."

Recently I showed a list of companies that have failed miserably through the years. Companies along with their brands that failed to keep pace with 21st Century changes. Brands that Baby Boomers grew up with that were relevant, strong and household names. Brands like Spiegel, Blockbuster, Columbia House, S&H Greenstamps, Polaroid and Smith Corona. Usually I get a few gasps in the crowd as it becomes clear just how many of these companies are gone, struggling or devolved into a website. A shadow of their greatness. The glory days gone by.

As a Baby Boomer — the first generation raised by television commercials — we were taught to identify with our brands

From Twinkie's to Star Wars, Coca Cola to Tang, Led Zeppelin to The Police, Corvette to Cadillac, Baby Boomers have a love affair with the past...a nostalgic memory of a time when we could count on a delicious bowl of soup from the Campbell Soup Company. "Mmm, Mmm, Good."

To prove my point: take one of the brands or companies mentioned above and I guarantee you have one of their commercials stuck in your head.

"My bologna has a first name it's O...S...C..." Well you know the rest.

Some businesses survived while others did not. Take a look at some of the established companies we grew up with that reinvented themselves for the new Digital Customer: John Deere, Domino's Pizza and of course Cadillac. Someone in my last audience went "Cadillac???" Yes...and here is why...

What did Cadillac represent to a Baby Boomer? If was the car you bought when you were ready to retire. A boat with all the fancy gadgets money could buy. My grandfather wanted a Cadillac so bad when he hit his 60s it wasn't funny.

Cadillac was the car you bought when you reached retirement age

To reinvent their brand, Cadillac hired Minneapolis-based Fallon — the ad agency tasked with completing a decade-long makeover.

How did they decide to take the Cadillac image to another level? They put their trust in a 28-year-old Veda Partalo. Time to show the world this isn't your grandfather's Caddy. Instead of telling us, she showed us. The roar of the engine. The sleek designs. Powerful and hip. It is ENCHANTING.

Read the full article here:

Cadillac Turns To A 28-Year-Old To Reinvent The "Standard Of The World"

Now that doesn't mean traditional advertising or branding is dead. What it means is if you want to survive in the 21st Century, you have to add a brand campaign for the next generation. They've got money this group...And the best way to do that is put a Millennial in charge of your Next Generation Brand Roll Out.

Your like "Brad! You want me to put a 28 year old in charge of a multimillion dollar ad campaign?" Cadillac's sales are up 37% since Ms. Partalo took over. So, what do you think? Hell yea!

Thanks for stopping by,




Brad Szollose
21st Century Change Agent: Generational expert, award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker

Brad Szollose is a much sought-after generational expert, management consultant and keynote speaker who helps smart companies understand just how much technology has transformed corporate culture and behavior… and how that impacts management interaction, expectations and sales in The Digital Age.



But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.


Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. 

His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Brad Szollose is also the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analogue driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.


Liquid Leadership has been called "THE guidebook for the 21st Century" and has won the 2011 Axiom Business Book Award silver medal for leadership, The Indie Business Book runner up silver medal as well as becoming a #1 Best-Selling Business Book on Amazon for Organizational Learning. Published in the United States by Greenleaf Book Group, in India by Prolibris and in South Korea by UI Books/Iljinsa Publishing.

Mr. Szollose also writes a monthly column on business and marketing techniques that reach Generation Y for A Captured Mind newsletter and is part of The Mind Capture Group faculty.

Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer. 



* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership

* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York

Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea.

Are You Leading The Revolution or Losing To It?

Excerpt from page 233 of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia...

I realize now how foolish I had been to think that the technology that I was using in 1992 would stay the same. What made me scratch my head at first was how things changed so quickly and how easily people accepted the change. Now I understand that as a Liquid Leader, you have to put your company out in front of changes in technology. You have to set an example for a new generation of workers. You have to continuously evolve your brand to lead the market, or you will get left behind.

With the advent of digitization, Kodak’s brand took a beating in the commercial over-the-counter retail markets. Their $5 billion camera and film market was decimated by digital cameras, cell phone cameras, and at home desktop photo printing. Yet Kodak just seemed to sit there. Even a joint venture with Nikon didn’t seem to help. What destroyed their dominance as a consumer brand were three inventions in particular: laptop computers, the Internet, and digital photography.

The funny thing is, Kodak invented the digital camera, but for some unknown reason chose not to lead the revolution. They lost their leadership position to camera companies willing to push all things digital and invent infrastructure and products to support the new tech. Casio, Nikon, Canon, and upstart Olympus began to take a chunk out of Kodak’s market, leaving the yellow-and-red giant sadly in last place. Here was Eastman Kodak, the innovator that almost single-handedly invented the entire photography industry—and as we approached the twenty-first century, I began to wonder if they would make it.

It took time, but digital photography began to outpace film and became the apparent leader in the future of photography. High-end companies like Hasselblad didn’t require you to buy a new camera; instead, they designed interchangeable sensors that worked with their current two-and-a-quarter film-based cameras. Brilliant.

And even when Kodak reentered the digital camera market, they were seen as a dinosaur. Despite being a trusted American brand, they were no longer leading; they were following. Kodak was last to enter a market they should have pioneered. Inertia had set the pace, when instead their battle cry should have been “Hurry up and follow our lead.”

Today’s brands can’t afford to make that sort of mistake. They must watch closely at how technology is changing their business, and take action.

If not, many will be left behind—eventually going out of business. Look at Polaroid, for example. What do they stand for? Who knows? I don’t have a clue. The Polaroid brand has become meaningless in the twenty-first century and needs an overhaul—fast. So far, they’ve abandoned their proprietary film technology in 2008 to focus on their sunglasses and LCD technology, along with a line of digital cameras. Recently, Polaroid chose Lady Gaga as their creative director and new face of Polaroid. After years of controversy, Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and ping-pong ownership, this may be the comeback Polaroid needs.

This is the era of unstable, transient brands. Those that don’t evolve, adapt, or do something will die out.

Hire someone who knows how to turn your brand around, and keep it leading in the 21st Century landscape. Try doing what Cadillac did.

Thanks for stopping by,




Brad Szollose
21st Century Change Agent: Generational expert, award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker

Brad Szollose is a much sought-after generational expert, management consultant and keynote speaker who helps smart companies understand just how much technology has transformed corporate culture and behavior… and how that impacts management interaction, expectations and sales in The Digital Age.



But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.


Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. 

His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Brad Szollose is also the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analogue driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.


Liquid Leadership has been called "THE guidebook for the 21st Century" and has won the 2011 Axiom Business Book Award silver medal for leadership, The Indie Business Book runner up silver medal as well as becoming a #1 Best-Selling Business Book on Amazon for Organizational Learning. Published in the United States by Greenleaf Book Group, in India by Prolibris and in South Korea by UI Books/Iljinsa Publishing.

Mr. Szollose also writes a monthly column on business and marketing techniques that reach Generation Y for A Captured Mind newsletter and is part of The Mind Capture Group faculty.

Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer. 



* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership

* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York

Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea.

Reinventing Pac-Man: How to Create a Brand That Becomes Timeless

Remember the first real video game to make it big? It was Pac-Man. At a time when space shooter games like Space Invaders and Asteroids dominated the new video game arcade market, Pac-Man stood apart. Perhaps it was the fact that it was so simple—a little yellow circle character ate its way around a maze attempting to avoid four primary colored enemies: Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. Or maybe it’s because you could eat a white power dot and the tides would turn and you could attack. Or maybe it was the first arcade game to attract women as well as men equally.



But let’s delve deeper and ask ourselves what made the Pac-Man franchise so successful? And why after 30 years, is it still loved by millions?

The reason Pac-Man did so well as a game is because it had ever-increasing challenges that kept pace with the user. And as a brand, it kept reinventing itself according to the customer!

 

Invented by a young game designer named Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man was his attempt to design a game that wasn’t violent and appealed to bother genders. Released in the United States in October of 1980 sales took off…and an estimated 25 BILLION quarters were pumped into Pac-Man. Remember, this is the early 80s, this kind of money was unheard of for video games.



But what made Pac-Man and eventually Ms. Pac-Man such an iconic brand that is STILL in use today, is the fact that it did something completely different from everyone else—it captured the hearts and minds of gamers all over the world. 



Here are three rules to follow, whether developing a marketing campaign, or managing your best employees…let’s learn from Pac-Man.



1) Create a Criteria for Success 


Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are simple. There is a maze, and dots you have to eat, and creatures to avoid, and even cooler stuff to eat — like pretzels, apples and oranges— which earns you even more points. It is so simple that there are no instructions on the game console. You can figure it out within one play.



The same with your marketing…keep it simple. When something is too complex, forget it, I’m walking away. Keep it simple. Sometimes intuitive is best.



Just look at all the devices out there today that rely on intuition to figure them out.  My iPhone has 5 buttons on it with no labels. There is no way my father's generation could figure this device out unless I showed him. But if I hand it to a 2 year old, they can use it in seconds. 



2) Continuously Increase the Pay-Off


There are only 4 levels in Ms. Pac-Man but no 2 games are ever the same. Each level goes faster, and as the risk becomes greater, so do the rewards, and with higher numbers from eating oranges, pretzels and cherries, you could really get higher scores the higher you go.



Brands that do not evolve or take no risks eventually lose our interest. Remember Starbucks Cafe restaurants? Of course not. They took a risk and it failed. But Starbucks is also trying new products and new flavors to peak our interest. 

But more importantly, as a brand it is smart to keep challenging your customers with greater and greater rewards for being a loyal customer.

Let me explain a little better. A brand is not a logo or a service but the EXPERIENCE a customer has with your company or product. Just check out the brands that keep us interested, challenged and provide a great experience: Apple, Dave & Busters, Cadillac, Zappos! and Google. Each of these brands attempts to keep our interest by introducing newer and better products, better customer service and cooler experiences. In many cases, these companies have also reinvented their market sectors.



And ANOTHER THING these brands do: they listen to their employees for ideas!

So sit down with some of your most talented people and ask them for some cool ideas…and get ‘em out there into the real world quickly. Time and technology wait for no one!



3) Give Customers What They Want

And while we are at it, you may have some great ideas, but chances are your customers have even better ideas for you to implement. Like Ms. Pac-Man. After Pac-Man was out for a while, a team of MIT grad students decided to create an add-on board that transformed the Pac-Man game into Ms. Pac-Man.

When they approached Midway, the game company that represented Namco here in the United States, they didn’t get angry, or ignore the new idea or try to sue them for opening up the game and tinkering with it. Instead they helped them rename it (the students originally called it Pac-Woman and Mrs. Pac-Man) and admitted they were looking for a spin-off to Pac-Man. 



Ms. Pac-Man sold 115,000 arcade game consoles
in its first three months! 



 

So listen to your customers, especially the ones who have become advocates. They may have better ideas for your company than you could come up with in 10 brainstorming sessions. Look, if people like your brand, that means you got them emotionally ...and therefore, they want you to make your stuff better. So why not listen to them?

And keep tweaking your company until you strike gold. In today’s NOW culture, customers respond immediately to something that captures their mind, and their hearts.
 
So don’t be afraid to create a brand that is iconic.

Thank you for reading...


Brad Szollose
Award-winning author, business consultant and keynote speaker

Brad Szollose is a management consultant and keynote speaker who helps smart companies understand just how much technology has transformed corporate culture and behavior…and how that impacts management, interaction and expectations in The Information Age.



But this is not based on management theory: With a 30 year career as an entrepreneur he knows firsthand what it’s like to grow a company from a simple idea in a coffee shop to an internationally recognized brand.


Brad is a former C-Level Internet Executive who went from entrepreneur to IPO in 3 yrs—co-founding K2 Design, the very first Dot Com Agency to go public on NASDAQ. His company experienced 425% hyper-growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 with 60+ employees and offices worldwide. At its height, K2 was valuated at over $26 million. 

His results only management model (ROWE) was applied to the first wave of young Generation Y workers producing great results—winning K2 the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices in Fostering Innovation.

Brad Szollose is the *award-winning author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia which explores the subject of new leadership styles – mainly how to get the tech-savvy Generation Y and analogue driven Baby Boomers working together. ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

Known for his humorous and thought-provoking presentations, Szollose received the highest testimonial of his career from a C-Level audience member: "I just had my mind blown." Brad’s keynotes and workshops are highly interactive, heart-warming, humorous, and filled with high-content information that challenge assumptions and help leaders and managers create a better work environment for innovation to thrive.


Liquid Leadership has been called "THE guidebook for the 21st Century" and has won the 2011 Axiom Business Book Award silver medal for leadership, The Indie Business Book runner up silver medal as well as becoming a #1 Best-Selling Business Book on Amazon for Organizational Learning. Published in the United States by Greenleaf Book Group, in India by Prolibris and in South Korea by UI Books/Iljinsa Publishing.

Mr. Szollose also writes a monthly column on business and marketing techniques that reach Generation Y for A Captured Mind newsletter and is part of The Mind Capture Group faculty.

Today, Brad helps businesses close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a Cultural Divide – created by the new tech-savvy worker...and customer. 



* 2011 Axiom Business Book silver medal winner in the leadership

* #1 Amazon Best-Selling Author

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York

Liquid Leadership by Brad Szollose is available at all major bookstores and for Kindle, Nook, iPad and Sony ereaders. Internationally published in India and S. Korea.

How a $7 Hamburger Can Make You or Break You

Back in the 60s my grandfather owned one of the most successful restaurants in South Central Pennsylvania— "Hotty's Cottage." It was named for my grandfather's nickname Hotty ( a knickname he received for being Hot Stuff on the drums) and the fact that he made it appear to be a cottage in the middle of the woods although it was right on main street in Chambersburg.

The reason his restaurant was so successful was his obsession with one thing: the customer experience. I'm not kidding. Whenever my grandfather cooked something it was like art. And he would just stand over a steak exclaiming "Oh now that is gonna taste good." If he was alive today he could have been on one of those cooking shows.

Saturdays were pretty amazing at Hotty's. People would come from upwards of 200 miles to eat at his place. Crab soup was a specialty, along with an affordable surf and turf and of course, mountainous cheeseburgers with steak fries, and steaks that sizzled as they were carried to their tables.

One day when I was helping him at The Cottage, he pulled me aside to gave me a piece of advice that I use even to this day...

Bradley, you can charge $7 for a hamburger and fries. And guaranteed, you WILL get a lot of people in the door. But, and here's the big picture, after you add up the cost of your waitstaff, electricity, gas, printed menus and all the little pieces of overhead, you will go broke even though your restaurant is packed."

I was 10.

What I didn't know at the time was my grandfather was grooming me for business. Real business in the real world. At the end of the day, regardless of whether it is a New Economic Order, or in cyberspace, or you believe we are all in this economy together, EVERY business is in it to make a profit.

Here are a few companies that forgot that a customer experience is what drives sales: Pets.com, Kozmo.com and eToys. Great ideas that just didn't get traction.

We have a Digital Divide in most companies around the world. Gen Y, Gamers, Millennials all have a new way of doing business that leaves The Industrial Age methodologies in the dust. But at the end of the day, the one that makes a profit, is the winner. Google knows that. Netflix knows that. And so does Amazon.

And another piece of my grandfather's wisdom echos in these companies brand... "The customer's experience is what we care about Bradley."

And BTW: Hotty's Cottage is still there...it's just called The Cottage these days.

Thanks for reading,

Brad Szollose

Brad is the award winning, international bestselling author of Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia: Multigenerational Management Ideas That Are Changing The Way We Run Things ISBN-13: 978-1608320554

As a Baby Boomer, Brad grew up watching the original Star Trek series, secretly wishing he would be commanding a Constitution Class Starship in the not too distant future. Since that would take a while, Brad became a technology driven, creative director who co-founded one of the very first Internet Development Agencies during the Dot Com Boom—K2 Design. As a Web Pioneer, Brad was forced to invent a new management model that engaged the first wave of Digital Workers. Today, Brad helps Fortune 500 Companies close the Digital Divide by understanding it as a cultural divide—created by a new tech-savvy worker...and customer.

Mr. Szollose also writes a monthly column on business and marketing techniques that reach Generation Y for A Captured Mind Newsletter and is part of The Mind Capture Group faculty.

"I just had my mind blown..." - A.S., Vistage, New York