I have long been a fan of Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, having read several of his books: The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, and Seeing What’s Next as well as many of his personal essays on his website. A few days ago, Dan Pink tweeted a link to this an article from the Harvard Business Review by Dr. Christensen called, How Will You Measure Your Life?. It’s a reworking of a speech that Dr. Christensen has given in a religious setting. This particular version is directed at recent graduates from Harvard Business School. It’s excellent advice and worth reading. Here’s a sample from the article:

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

The rest of the article is today’s Friday Inspiration. You can find it here.

No one reads books any more.

No, that’s not exactly true.

Almost no one reads books any more.

Which means one of two things.

Either reading is no longer useful or it’s a phenomenal opportunity for the few people who do it.

Those who think books aren’t useful would argue that there are new places to get the same information: Wikipedia, blogs, twitter, Google—you name it, they can find what they need somewhere else.

And maybe they’re right (in part).

But the people who read books know something that the first group doesn’t. Books aren’t just about finding information, they’re about something bigger.

Like exploring ideas in depth.

Finding answers to problems.

Discovering new ways of thinking.

No one gets the same depth or breadth of thinking from Wikipedia or an article at Inc.com or TED talk that they will get in a good book on the same subject.

We’re talking about the difference between an appetizer and seat at the banquet.

Most people prefer to starve.

In 2004, the National Endowment of the Arts issued a report called Reading at Risk. In it, the NEA reported that only 56.6% of American adults had read a book of any kind (fiction or non-fiction) in the past year.

And that statistic may be inflated—40% of people in a different survey admitted to lying about having read certain books (source).

Most book readers read fiction.

Which means there is a real opportunity for anyone who wants to stand out from the guy in the next cubicle who loves to talk about what happened last night on Two and a Half Men (the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every day).

If you read one business book a month (just 5-10 pages a day) you expose yourself to new ideas and solutions to problems that your cubical buddy will simply not get from his sit down with Charlie Sheen and the rest of the prime-time line-up.

Harvest just one idea from each book and you’ll have 12 more ideas than Mr. TV. And if you can get more than one idea from a book, or you read more than one book a month, well, the math just gets better.

So where should you start?

Here are a few lists I’ve stumbled across recently. Lots of good choices here:

• One of my favorite lists each year is from Strategy+Business.
• Business Week Online just published a new recommended reading list, here. (It’s actually a list of lists—recommendations by 30 Business Professors around the country).
• Summer Reading from Wharton.
• Six Best Books to Read for Your Career (that’s the title of the article, not necessarily a recommendation from me).
• Books that Matter 2010 (from Tom Peters).
• Must Read Books for CEOs (again, a title, not necessarily a recommendation).

And, of course, there’s always The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (check out my review, here).

Have another book or recommendation list? Please add it in the comments.

In 1998, I stumbled across Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth for the first time. I remember downloading it to my Palm Pilot so I could refer to it whenever I wanted to. I shared it with many of the creative people I have worked with over the years. In the time since I first discovered the manifesto, it has been posted to hundreds of websites, sometimes in very unique ways (like this and this). It has been plagiarized and satirized. But what Bruce wrote 12 years ago, is still applicable today. If you are interested in personal growth, this is a good place to start. And it’s this week’s friday inspiration:

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

Earlier this week, I finished reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson. It’s a good read, full of small bits of wisdom—the kind of book you can read in an hour or two, or come back to from time to time for another hit of inspiration. Today’s friday inspiration comes from the section called Pick a Fight:

If you think a competitor sucks, say so. When you do that, you’ll find that others who agree with you will rally to your side. Being the anti-_____ is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers.

For example, Dunkin’ Donuts likes to position itself as the anti-Starbucks. Its ads mock Starbucks for using “Fritalian” terms instead of small, medium, and large. Another Dunkin’ campaign is centered on a taste test in which it beat Starbucks. There’s even a site called DunkinBeatStarbucks.com where visitors can send e-cards with statements like “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.”

Audi is another example. It’s been taking on the old guard of car manufacturers. It puts “old luxury” brands like Rolls-Royce and Mercedes “on notice” in ads touting Audi as the fresh luxury alternative. Audi takes on Lexus’s automatic parking systems with ads that say Audi drivers know ow to part their own cars. Another ad gives a side-by-side comparison of BMW and Audi owners: The BMW owner uses the rearview mirror to adjust his hair while the Audi driver uses the mirror to see what’s behind him.

Apple jabs at Microsoft with ads that compare Mac and PC owners, and 7UP bills iteslf as the Uncola. Under Armour positions itself as Nike for a new generation.

All these examples show the power and direction you can gain by having a target in your sights. Who do you want to take a shot at?

You can even pit yourself as the opponent of an entire industry. Dyson’s Airblade starts with the premise that the hand-dryer industry is a failure and then sells itself as faster and more hygienic than the others. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter puts its enemy right there in its product name.

Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too. (Emphasis mine.) Taking a stand always stands out. People get stoked by conflict. They take sides. Passions are ignited. And that’s a good way to get people to take notice.

Dear Designer,

As you know, I currently have an opening for a senior designer.

In fact, I have a couple of openings. It’s a decent position. Good salary. Benefits. Lots of work. And I want to hire you. Really, I do. But you are making that very difficult.

So, in the interest of helping you get the job you seem not to want, here’s a little advice. I hope it’s useful.

1. You are a designer. That means the most important thing you can show me is design. Not your resume. Not your references. Not your LinkedIn profile. Not your blog. Not your scrapbook. Not your twitter feed. And not your cover letter. Sure, all these things might help me see that you are the kind of person who will fit in with our team, but if I can’t find your portfolio, I won’t waste my time with any of this stuff.

I just reviewed 68 applications for the position you applied for and more than half didn’t include a single sample of design work. Here’s an idea: blow me away with your design talent and leave me wanting to talk to you about everything else. We’ll connect on Facebook after we talk.

2. You need an online portfolio. Offers to show your portfolio “on request” are a waste of your time and mine. Websites are cheap and easy to create, in fact, if you want to be a senior designer, you should have created several of them by now. Get one for yourself. Now. If your portfolio needs to be explained, it’s not good enough.

3. You don’t need to show me every piece of work you’ve done in your career. Just show me the best stuff. Knock my socks off. If you can show me just 5-7 things that are awesome, I’ll know you are capable of greatness. And you’ll get an interview.

4. I don’t care what you did in high school. Or boy scouts. Leave it off your resume.

5. MySpace is not an effective portfolio host. Just trust me on this one.

6. If you’ve been in college since 2003 and plan to graduate in 2011, you need to have a very good story as to why.

7. You may think that putting stuff like “I take long walks, I ponder life’s imponderables” on your resume will make me think you are deep. It doesn’t. It makes me think you are weird.

8. No designer should send an 8-page unformatted word document as a resume. And don’t title it “childprotegy.doc.” (sic). This is the very best way to show me you aren’t.

9. If your website crashes my machine (twice), I won’t come back. Sorry.

10. You know the section on the resume that is usually called “objective”? Leave it out. I know that the objective is to find a job, otherwise you wouldn’t be sending your resume to me. The thing is, no one ever says the objective is to get a job. Instead they write, “to find an upwardly mobile position within a fast-paced, forward-moving organization in which I can contribute to critical strategic initiatives and demonstrate my ability to…blah, blah, blah”. Let’s just leave this section out. It takes up space and tells me you’re not creative enough to think of something better.

11. I know that the expected thing is to send a cover letter and resume. In fact, the posting asks for it. But that doesn’t mean that’s all you should do. You’re a designer. You’re creative. Prove it.

In this economy, there are a lot of people who want the job you are applying for. You need to find a way to stand out. Show me you are an artist. That you think differently. That you’ll contribute. Do that and the job is pretty much yours.

Your friend and possibly future employer,

Me.

I was at dinner last week, reminiscing with a friend when he asked me if I knew a certain person. “You remember,” he said, “he’s the kid who had the bloody eye.” I immediately knew who he was talking about. Lots of kids had bloody noses, but only one had a bloody eye.

We could have talked about “the kid who wrecked his dad’s car before he got his driver’s license” …or the “kid who kept a goldfish in his locker at school” or “the kid who had that huge afro.” Each of these descriptions (stories) is a short cut that immediately describes a particular person. There is no ambiguity. No question who the person is. There was only one who fit the description.

Consumers do the same thing when thinking of brands. In fact, creating a short cut for the consumer to remember your product is one of the primary reasons for developing a strong brand.

That’s the brand that…

Luke Sullivan, author of the excellent book, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, defines a brand like this:

Brand = Adjective

Luke’s simple formulation demonstrates the association of a particular product with a single idea (much like Scott = kid with goldfish in locker).

Nordstrom = phenomenal customer service
Mountain Dew = Extreme refreshment
Volvo = Safety
Southwest = Low cost air travel
Papa John’s = Better pizza

And so on.

What is your brand’s thing?

What simple idea represents the core of who you are and what you do? Does it immediately help your customers remember something important about your product? And does it help you tell your brand story? Geek Squad? They’re the ones who drive black and white VWs and wear skinny black ties. Subway? They’re the ones who helped the fat guy lose more than 100 pounds eating hoagies. Fox News? They’re the ones who report the news from a right-leaning viewpoint. No other brands fit these descriptions.

If your product or service doesn’t own a particular idea, you’ve got work to do.

Successful brands need to be more like the one unforgettable kid with the bloody eye, not the dozens of forgettable kids who had nose bleeds.

This entry was originally posted on April 18, 2007 at the old Brandstory blog (link for a limited time).

James Dyson is a failer (not failure). While vacuming his home, he became frustrated with the lousy suction of his vacuum cleaner. The bag and filter clogged too quickly, reducing the suction to the point where it didn’t work. I know the feeling. But unlike me, Dyson decided to do something about it. Over 15 years, he built 5126 prototypes before he found the one that worked. 15 years and 5126 failures. How did he find the solution? “Wrong doing.” Here’s how Dyson describes it:

“When I was doing my vacuum cleaner, I started out trying a conventionally shaped cyclone, the kind you see in textbooks. But we couldn’t separate the carpet fluff and dog hairs and strands of cotton in those cyclones. It formed a ball inside the cleaner or shot out the exit and got into the motor. I tried all sorts of shapes. Nothing worked. So then I thought I’d try the wrong shape, the opposite of conical. And it worked. It was wrong-doing rather than wrong-thinking. That’s not easy, because we’re all taught to do things the right way.”

There’s are plenty of lessons in Dyson’s story. Never give up. Don’t settle for stuff that doesn’t work. But the lesson I like most is the idea of right thinking and wrong doing. Doing things in a different (new or unexpected) way is the crux of creativity.

To get his vacuum to work, Dyson had to do it all wrong. And when he offered his new design to Hoover, they did the opposite—right doing and wrong thinking. They sold bag vacuums. This new vacuum wouldn’t fit their product line. It was too different. They had the market sown up. So they passed on the idea. Dyson went on to sell more than 15 million of his vacuums (for as much as $2000 each). Today he is one of the richest men in Britain.

Inside the box, with every Dyson vacuum cleaner is a small brochure that tells the Dyson brand story. How James Dyson failed more than 5000 times. How his competitors first ignored him, then copied him. And how he succeeded despite the odds. This simple brochure is a great way to reinforce the Dyson brand story with every new customer. Of course, the fact that this is an amazingly good vacuum delivering a great product experience also helps.

This month’s Fast Company magazine features a very good interview by Chuck Salter with James Dyson, covering not just his vacuum story, but also his thinking about design and engineering and his latest invention. Read it here. Don’t miss the second page, which is even better than the portion of the interview in the print magazine. There’s also a podcast interview here.

One more clip from the interview:

“A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that’s the point when you should push a little harder. I use the analogy of running a race. It seems as though you can’t carry on, but if you just get through the pain barrier, you’ll see the end and be okay. Often, just around the corner is where the solution will happen.”

This entry was originally posted on January 25, 2007 at the old Brandstory blog (link available for a limited time). Of everything I wrote at the old blog, this entry got the most enthusiastic comments. I’ve added some of them at the bottom of the post—sorry I could not port the links to the writers who posted them.

I’ve been thinking a lot about brand voice lately. How companies talk to their customers. What brands sound like. How they read.

I’m not just talking about how a brand sounds to the ear, though that is important for products that communicate with broadcast media: think Tom Bodette and Motel6 or Hal Riney (who voiced Reagan’s famous Bear Ad) and Bartles & James.

There are lots of examples of companies that consistently use identity design to reinforce their brands, but far fewer brands seem to give as much thought to the voice of their communications. Mini does it exceptionally well, across all mediums. The Economist and Apple too. Harley Davidson does a pretty good job (there are exceptions). Saturn used to have unique voice—before it was assimilated.

But what’s the brand voice of Marriott? Cascade? Pepsi? Dell? Citi? Buick? Is there anything unique about the way Kroger, Budget, Hershey’s, or Delta speak to their customers? None of these are bad, but none of them speak in a special way to their customers.

Try googling “Brand Standards.” There are dozens of examples of identity guidelines showing how to use official logos, fonts, and colors. But very little attention is paid to brand voice—the words, phrases, and characteristics that set a brand apart take a back seat to the more “important” visual aspects of the brand.

Why is this? I have a theory. As we grow up and attend school, most of us “learn” that we are not good artists—that is, we can’t draw much beyond doodles. Bureaucrats think of art classes as luxuries, and cut funding because they are not as important as the standard reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Writing on the other hand is more universal. Very few people learn they can’t write in the same way they learn they can’t draw. Regardless of whether you are good at it, writing is required for most classes from math to English, debate to biology. So most of us grow up thinking we write relatively well (even though we probably don’t). Certainly well enough to communicate.

So we don’t trust ourselves with the design of marketing and other important business materials. We hire professionals for that. And we create brand standards to help us when the designer isn’t there. But we do trust ourselves to write effectively enough to get our point across, even though we don’t have the training to create a brand voice. So we create copy. Lots of it. Most of it bad.

Even many copywriters don’t think about copy the way designers think about design—tweaking a few words here, cutting a phrase there, rewriting a paragraph over and over until it sounds just right. And that’s too bad, because when done right, the brand voice is the most difficult part of branding to copy. You can’t fake it.

Have you seen a brand standard recently that includes direction on the brand voice? How well is it followed? Does your business use a unique voice to tell your brand story? Let me know in the comments.

Read a little more about brand voice here.
More thoughts (video) about the failure of our schools to teach creativity by Sir Ken Robinson, here. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch this very funny, very insightful video.

Some of the original comments:

Larry Fahey: Good God, it’s like you’re INSIDE my head. I’m a copywriter and brand strategy guy, and this is it in a nutshell: Everyone thinks they can write. When’s the last time you saw a client come in and take the mouse from a designer to fix up a design? Never. But they rewrite copy at will. I wish I had a nickel for every time a client has told me “no one reads the copy anyway.”

I’m a cynic at heart, but if I wasn’t, I would say there’s a bright side: The smart agency (or client) can find a real advantage over competitors by paying attention to the finer points of copy. In a world filled with terrible copy, great brand copy could be a real edge. That is, if you can find a good brand copywriter. Big “if.”

Agent A: We spend so long trying to explain this to clients. Completely agree that it may be a perspective that’s nurtured though. I was in an ad agency recently, and even their own account handling people referred to the “creative” and “the copy” as being separate elements.

This entry was originally posted on August 28, 2006 at the old Brandstory blog (link available for a limited time).

I was catching up on some reading a few days ago and came across this excellent article in the Harvard Business Review: Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers by John Gourville. A very worthwhile read about the tendency of buyers to under estimate their need for new products and marketers to over estimate the public’s desire for the same products.

Marketers spend so much time with their innovations and become so familiar with the advantages over existing products, that the new product becomes their reality. They simply can’t see why people won’t immediately adopt their product. While consumers overvalue the products they are familiar with and see behavioral changes such as switching brands as a major negative. The authors cite specific examples like Segway, Tivo, and WebVan as terrific innovations that have experienced failure or slow adoption rates due to these opposing factors. Here’s the nut graph:

“…consumers overvalue the existing benefits of an entrenched product by a factor of three, while developers overvalue the new benefits of their innovation by a factor of three. The result is a mismatch of nine to one, or 9x, between what innovators think consumers desire and what consumers really want. Left unchecked, this mismatch is a recipe for disaster.”

If you’re involved in creating marketing, advertising, or disruptive technologies, this behavior has massive implications for what you do. Read the whole thing.

This entry was originally posted on December 23, 2005 at the old Brandstory blog (link available for a limited time).

Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense, has a nice website with lots of his thinking on branding. You can sign up for a free monthly newsletter and read dozens of articles here. It’s enough to keep you busy through the holidays.

The following is one of the articles (I’ve reprinted the whole thing). This is not my writing, but I agree with a lot of Lindstrom’s thinking. Enjoy…

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Wonderful Brand

The year was 1895. King Camp (his real name) stood before his shaving mirror, as he’d done many times before. A new thought occurred to him. His cut-throat razor was performing its job as well as usual, but so little of the blade was actually used in the shaving process. King Camp wondered about a new type of blade, one practically all edge. He thought about housing it in a device that would make shaving cuts and accidents nearly impossible. Then, he thought about making it disposable. If he could make a blade that was thin, flat, efficient, cheap, and disposable… did I neglect to mention King Camp’s surname was Gillette?

We all love a good story. More important, we remember good stories. Good stories make things personal. We identify with characters and recall details associated with them. The effect is the same when characters are brands. Introduce a brand in the context of a good story, and the corporate entity gains personality. It becomes warm and friendly.

Many brands forget interesting bits and pieces of their pasts, the details that make them unique and differentiate them from other brands. Why all this talk about branded story telling? The Web is probably the best place for sharing a story.

A Web audience can explore fascinating stories, like why a Coke bottle looks like it does or how Band-Aid and Mars Bar got their names. A good story around a brand, one intrinsic to its identity, is an effective way to generate consumer understanding and loyalty. Why are stories untold by Fortune 500 companies? You hardly ever find a good story on a brand’s Web site, despite the fact most companies would have a story to tell that makes them unique.

Stories don’t need to be spectacular or reside at the core of a brand’s existence, like Mr. Gillette’s. Tell the story of why your design approach looks the way it does, how your name came about, what’s behind your logo, interesting ways your product has been used by customers, feedback from unexpected people. Small stories can differentiate your brand from others.

Branding occurs in the minds of consumers. Humans naturally create associations. We surround ourselves with associations — the physical, intellectual, and emotional familiarities of our lives. When the Internet appeared, instead of URLs there were numbers. Soon, these were converted into text because no one could remember a 20-digit number. Even fewer could relate to one. Numbers may be more rational and systematic, but that’s irrelevant in the face of our human instincts.

Ask your founder about your company’s past. Ask your customer service department about funny or memorable customer experiences. Ask your product development department why your product looks like it does. Then, turn corporate memories into a branded story you can include on your site. Not only will customers love it, employees will feel proud of their heritage and brand’s history.

And don’t miss this story-related article on creating user testimonials in a B2B environment.