“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”
Category: Ideas
Brand Manners
Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.
In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:
Does your brand have good manners?
That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.
In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’
– Listen to others
– Have patience
– Wait your turn to talk
– Never interrupt
– Ask for permission
– Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
– Be honest, truthful and pure
– Be punctual
– Be tidy
– Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
– Keep out of bad company
– Be kind to those around you
– Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
– Don’t cheat
– Be polite at all times
Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.
You can download the PDF here: goodmanners
And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.
Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.
Brand hijack – chupa chups
So we’ve all heard about UGC and the virtues of having your brand hijacked by passionate users. The truth is most brands ‘just got lucky’ when it happens to them. The real trick is knowing what to do when it does happen. How to leverage it without destroying the organic evolution which allowed it in the first place.
Chupa chups is a recent example in Australia of a Brand Hijack. It’s been a bit of a darling within various youth culture subsets – including the rave and hip hop scenes. The cool thing here is that Chupa chups (which incidently is licensed to Cadbury in Australia) hasn’t stuffed it up. Instead they’ve had the wisdom to embrace it – create a canvas for the brand to further ensconce itself in ‘their world’. The brand has ‘got involved with’ the laneway art scene in Melbourne – by creating an event for ‘them’.
The event is being held AC DC lane (apropos) where all street artists can display their talents – free. The lane will have bands, drinks and food open for all and free Chupa chups! They’ve even minimised the awareness campaign one which requires a certain level of self discovery only using street posters and limited street press to communicate the event. They’ve kept it all relatively ‘low key’. In fact, even the art commissioned by Chupa Chups to start the festival doesn’t have any branding. Wow – a brand that gets it.
The visual has already hit the wall as seen below…
You’ll notice the lollipop parachutes and the small chupa chups logo (sans branding) – which incidently was orginally designed by Salvadore Dali . Nice.
If you’re in Melbourne this weekend it’d be worth checking out – I’ll be there.
Start up lesson – Cool brands do cool stuff.
Hard Stuff or Easy Stuff?
Check out the following chart:
We can either,
1. do the easy stuff now.
or
2. do the hard stuff now.
Either choice ultimately leads to the opposite end of the spectrum over time. It’s the same for sport, business, scholarly pursuits, wealth creattion and entrepreneurs. Sure it’s easy to know, but ‘it’s equally easy to forget. When things aren’t going so well, or we are not getting the wins we want – maybe we should consider the chart above, and decide what we were doing a little while ago, and more importantly which tangent we want to be on in the future.
It’s our choice.
Best business card 2008 – Goddess of Revenue
I recently met Kim Chen from tjoos at Startup Camp Melbourne. Smart girl.
The thing that impressed me the most was her business card. Job Title = Goddess of Revenue. Love it.
So it’s a bit hard to read above, but being a ‘Goddess of Revenue’ says so much. The first thing it says is that Kim ‘gets it’. It says she knows that fun is important, but revenue is vital.
Then on the flipside is more useful stuff.
The kind of stuff which just maybe gives her a permanent place in someones wallet or purse. A good chunk of simple, yet useful information.
It’ll be handy next time in Sydney on business…. and her simple business card made me remember Kim, it even got her a story on this here blog.
If we are going to the trouble of printing business cards – we should make it worth remembering.
Blog action day
Here’s the video for blog action day 2008.
[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=nOnjMusOBfs]
Startup blog got involved last year – which you can read here. And I’m excited to do so again – it’s pretty cool that new digital media has given us a voice, best we use it.
Critical thinking
Many entrepreneurs start their careers working for big business. There are many things we can learn from big business. One of which is Critical Thinking – the ability to analyse a set of circumstances and make a commercial decision.
Every startup has gaps. Gaps in strategy, gaps in the launch campaign and gaps in financing the venture.
Gaps that would usually be criticized in large conglomerate X during the mandatory ‘Critical Thinking’ session. If we want to get our startup off the ground , then we simply must ‘unlearn’ some of the things which we have leanred and adopted from our life in the large corporate sector. Critical Thinking is one of them.
What we need is Complimentary Thinking.
Pointing out the good and building on the parts that will work. Is what entrpreneurship is about. To criticise anything in the embryonic stage is counter productive. Critical thinking aims at protecting revenue – not inventing it. Critical thinking leads to finding a reason not to do something. Complimentary thinking builds on what we have, it finds a way to make things happen and accept imperfection.
Our ability to unlearn ‘critical thinking’ is really one of the important differences between being an employee and becoming an entrepreneur.