BrainZooming

The Daily Blog Has Moved to Brainzooming.com!

2010-01-30T21:21:00.000-06:00

As of February 1, 2010, all new Brainzooming posts will be at Brainzooming.com.

To View the Daily Brainzooming Blog: You can go right to the up-to-date daily Brainzooming blog at this link.

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Thanks to all of you for following and reading the blog! We appreciate your support and readership and are excited for you to join us at Brainzooming.com!

Are You Facing a Creative Imbalance?

2010-01-29T04:50:00.006-06:00

Being in the transportation industry (as I was) meant a lot of time spent thinking about balance, and not being too heavy inbound or outbound. In moving things (or people), the ideal state is the same number arriving and departing. If you're too heavy outbound, it means you have lots of things going out, but very few coming in. Heavy inbound is the opposite - many things arriving, but few leaving. Within the economy, there are distinct geographic and industrial patterns in the movement of goods and people. As a result, transportation providers are constantly trying to achieve balance within their networks.

All of this has a direct tie to creativity. It's not difficult to find yourself in creative imbalance, with a disconnect between the amount of creativity you're producing and the creative elements you're taking in to fuel your own pursuits.

Typically, I run heavy on the outbound side of creativity. Part of it is my personality; part of it is a strategy to provide real-life testing of the various creativity-instigating exercises and tools I share. If I'm creatively spent and a particular approach helps spur my creativity, chances are it will work for you as well.

Right now though, I'm so heavy outbound, it's a little ridiculous. Beyond blogging and tweeting, I've been doing a lot of proposal writing (which is a wonderful situation to have), building messaging for the business side of Brainzooming, and trying to do more commenting and guest blogging, too.

One problem of being too heavy outbound in transportation is you wind up with all the equipment you need to function located somewhere else. You have problems making commitments because you lack necessary resources.

What that means for me in the creativity world is trying to force myself to schedule an all inbound day - no blog writing, no tweeting, no thinking about what I should be communicating. Simply a day to read, absorb, replenish, and learn, unencumbered by the need to say something.

Quite a goal, and I'll let you know when it's achieved! In the meantime, how's your creative balance? - Mike Brown

8 Ways Social Media Benefits Events

2010-01-27T04:50:00.012-06:00

Incorporating social media (via Twitter, blogging, video, community sites, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) is a growing phenomenon for live and virtual events. Last week included a swing through Chicago for strategy development on two conferences where I produced social media in 2009. I'll be heavily involved in growing the social media presence for both events (the national Business Marketing Association and the American Marketing Association Market Research Conferences) again in 2010.

According to attendees and event industry observers, we introduced more innovative social media experiences than even many tech-oriented events. This impact at the front end of producing event-based social media comes from the fact the activity merges several areas of expertise for Brainzooming, including:

Strategy development
Customer experience design
Social media
Event production

Based on first-hand experience, beyond creating a buzz or "newness" for an event, strategically incorporating event-based social media delivers a variety of real benefits:

We created additional layers of content beyond capturing speaker talking points. We produced additional commentary, links to relevant information, and video interviews, among other educational assets.
We extended the conference impact to audiences outside the event through conference websites and the liberal use of hashtags.
It's possible to motivate favorable behaviors through incorporating promotional offers to drive trade show traffic.
It provides another way for attendees to become actively engaged in an event.
We gained an understanding of audience reactions to presenters on a real-time basis.
It's a way to solicit and address on-site customer service issues.
Our efforts provided additional educational value by introducing a large percentage of attendees to social media applications.
The social media team's presence prompted new interaction opportunities among those engaged in tweeting at each event.

What experiences have you discovered with event-based social media? We've found that realizing the full range of benefits requires a well-planned strategy and "producing" an event's social media effort, not simply leaving it solely to organic development. (Check out the deck we put together for the AMA Marketing Research Conference to get a sense of the range of interactivity we built into the event.)

Through both producing major events and taking a lead on organic social media in a number of smaller events, we've developed many fundamental approaches and look forward to sharing the benefits of these learnings in events this year. And if you're doing event planning, let us know if you're interested in finding out more about how social media can deliver new value for your event. - Mike Brown

Important Update for Those With Brainzooming.blogspot.com Favorited or Viewing through RSS - Moving Time!

2010-01-26T04:55:00.003-06:00

I've mentioned a few times about moving the blog to a new website. Well, the time has come!

After this Friday, daily blog publishing on Brainzooming.blogspot.com will stop. Starting today, you can begin to find new, daily blog posts at Brainzooming.com! (Note: Brainzooming.blogspot.com will still be online for now, although archived content has moved to the new site.)

This move has been a long time coming and with the change to the Wordpress platform, the website will now contain the blog plus information on Brainzooming service offerings, presentations I do, and tools that have been previously scattered across other websites.

I'm still learning about the new website and there are more features to be added, but it's been functioning well the past couple of weeks (i.e., it's been feeding email blog subscribers since January 18), so it's ready for the transition.

Here's what you can do to stay current with daily Brainzooming posts:

For People Who Visit the Website Directly: Please favorite the new site at http://brainzooming.com/. The latest Brainzooming blog post will be located here.

For RSS Subscribers: The new RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/brainzooming/ZWKr

You can also click here to sign up to receive the Brainzooming blog by email. If you're a current email subscriber, there's nothing you need to do to continue receiving Brainzooming daily.

Thanks to all of you for following and reading the blog! My goal with every post is to provide something of benefit to you on how to better incorporate strategy, creativity, or innovation into your business and personal lives. Since this is about providing value to you, please let me know your thoughts on the new site.

Thanks particularly to Seth Simonds who has been instrumental in creating the foundation and structure for Brainzooming.com!

Again, I appreciate your support and readership and am excited for you to join me at the new Brainzooming.com!

3 Links Between Your Company and Personal Brands

2010-01-26T04:50:00.002-06:00

In a recent blog post, Mike Arauz, a strategist at Undercurrent, raised the issue of how personal and company brands fit together. He addressed the issue in the advertising industry particularly where the personal brands of an agency's employees can readily take on more prominence than its own.

Beyond offering a comment on how I'd handled this situation myself, the post suggested three other important elements in linking company and personal brand strategy:

More prominently marketing your personal brand implies you have to manage yourself successfully. As with a company's brand management team, carefully select the people you surround yourself with to help you shape your innovative personal brand strategy.

Ideally, your strong personal brand should be complementary to your employer's brand. At a minimum, they shouldn't be in conflict and should work in tandem. At best, the professional characteristics you successfully display in your job should be creatively displayed in your personal brand as well.

Make a conscious evaluation of elements from your employer's brand to incorporate into your personal brand for the mutual benefit of both. Are there personality, expertise, or performance attributes your employer is known for that you have come to strongly embody? If so, consider how you can creatively bring these into your personal brand. - Mike Brown

Domino's, Conan, and 3 Fundamentals for Communicating Big Brand Change

2010-01-25T04:50:00.003-06:00

There are lots of discussions on whether Domino's is brilliantly innovative or colossally mistaken in the redesign of its pizza with new crust, sauce, and cheese. It's obviously a multi-dimensional brand question involving both major product and communications decisions.

Not having eaten Domino's for years, I don't know whether it's better or not. Instead, the question here is how to creatively present a major strategy change to customers? Do you do a mea culpa, as Domino's has done, saying we've heard you, and it's necessary to change? Or do you take an even more aggressive stance and sell against what you were doing previously?

While some commentators have said Domino's is doing the latter, it depends on what communications you're watching.

Its 4-plus minute "documentary" version of the story presents a Domino's message of, "We've heard your concerns and have been working hard to address them." Editing to sound bites for a TV spot, however, pushes the message closer to, "We sold you crappy food, and said it was good." By the time comedians and the public get a shot, it's, "We suck, and frankly, we didn't care...until now."

Here are three communications take-aways from Domino's to consider when implementing a major change:

Go out of your way to NEVER sell against what you used to do. Violating this simply makes you look stupid ("If you knew you sucked, why were you doing it in the first place?"). Your loyal customers will also FEEL stupid ("They say they suck; what does that make us for liking what they did?").

There's a fine creative balance since your focused change message will change based on who's shaping it. Even if you followed the first lesson, somebody outside or inside your own organization will wind up messing up the message (intentionally or unintentionally), ensuring you will be selling against your history.

This issue isn't limited to brand changes and turnarounds. It applies to internal programs, reorganizations, career changes, etc. When you're making a dramatic change, really think through your strategy and what you really want to offer as the rationale.

The Conan-Leno Tonight Show debacle at NBC is a relevant example of these three fundamentals. I've never been a big Conan fan, but watched during his last week to see how he handled the messaging relative to the three lessons above:

Conan didn't message against the past, as much as against what the future held. He skewered NBC, but focused more on the ridiculousness of the current moment and future changes in forcing his decision to leave.

His well-known ironic, wink-of-the-eye comedy style gave him lots of room to play with the situation. And as his late-night comedy competitors weighed in on the story, he took an underdog role, laying claim to being the most respectful defender of The Tonight Show brand legacy!

Amid this significant brand and career change, Conan used the last moments before his highly-compensated, highly-enforced silence, not to savage NBC, but to talk instead about the pride in his 20 year association with NBC. Watch the excerpt below from his final episode to see a tremendously classy way of messaging a nasty change and doing it with dignity.

Periods of major change are great proving grounds for brand marketers. Go to school on these two very prominent examples for approaches and learnings to use in future turnarounds you face. - Mike Brown

One More Time with a "Little More Chicken Fat"

2010-01-22T04:50:00.002-06:00

Here's some variety - a funny video with Paul Dooley (the dad in Sixteen Candles) trying to coax just the right commercial read out of an announcer in a comedy routine captured at The Bottom Line in New York. Enjoy!

The Memorability of Creative Job Titles - Guest Post by Misty Stocksdale

2010-01-21T04:50:00.001-06:00

I caught up with Misty Stocksdale last fall at a Kansas City tweetup hosted by Shelly Kramer and Laura Lake at Manifesto - a very cool, very dark setting. We exchanged business cards, but her attention-commanding title at Total Home was only visible the next morning: Multi-Skilled Genius.

After checking the company's website and seeing that everyone had equally cool titles, I tweeted Misty, asking asked her to share the rationale and impact behind them. In the first guest Brainzooming post of 2010, here's Misty's take on creative job titles:

The Kansas City home remodeling industry is home to thousands of contractors, business owners, project managers and installers. Attend an industry function and you’ll collect an array of business cards: different sizes, shapes and colors; identical titles, labels and monikers.

Peer-to-peer networking and executive-to-prospect interactions should be memorable and distinguishing. Anything less makes the connection insignificant and possibly forgettable. A name, for the most part, cannot be altered. But a job title, on the other hand, leaves room for creative flexibility and long-term impact.

My small business decided to do away with the traditional title syndrome two years back. We no longer hire Painters, Accountants and Marketing Managers. Instead, we recruit Artists, Number Crunchers and Multi-Skilled Geniuses. We showcase these distinct titles on our email signatures, business cards and website contact pages.

A creative job title sparks ice-breaking curiosity. It removes standard barriers and it allows an individual to be instantaneously expressive of who they are and what type of work they do. The creative combination of a few words can make for an interesting calling card that will inevitably set the Head Chef of a home remodeling company apart from every other Owner/Manager in the room.

Our titles evoke friendly responses from clients and professionals, alike. The obvious creativity and flair behind such a title is inspiring to a person who will potentially be working with us. The titles offer a window to our attitude and make us just a little more memorable in comparison to our peers. In an industry that values the skillfulness of reformation, the innovativeness of renovation and the resourcefulness of imagination, the last thing we would want to do is get lost in the crowd. - Misty Stocksdale

Get Up Early

2010-01-20T04:50:00.001-06:00

Next time you're stymied when trying to get a creative project done, try this: get up very early when it's quiet and your mind's clear and devote the extra time to getting the project done.

Using potentially your most creative perspective of the day (even if you're not a morning person) is an appropriate strategy when a project requires your freshest innovative thinking. - Mike Brown

See Me, Feel Me, Criticize Me

2010-01-19T04:50:00.001-06:00

It's a challenge to objectively examine your own website as if a prospect or customer seeking information would. There's an approach you can follow to get ideas flowing though: Look at a direct competitor's online presence, trying to shoot holes in it based on how a customer might view it.

You should really be able to get into it by answering a few questions:

What misleading or out-of-date information is presented?

What's not compelling about the website?

What's confusing about the navigation?

How much unnecessary detail do I have to supply to get a copy of the "free" download?

What questions do I have that the website doesn't answer?

Do I know where to get my other questions answered?

In what ways did I get smarter by browsing this website?

In what ways were my information needs left wanting?

After doing this, go back and see how your own online presence compares. Looking at yourself from a customer perspective should now be much easier! - Mike Brown

Don't I Know You?

2010-01-18T04:50:00.004-06:00

How do you cultivate relationships initiated and largely conducted online? And how does it work with thousands of people following you?

The answer to the first question is, pretty much like you do offline relationships. And the answer to the second question is...the same.

For me, "shared experiences" are at the heart of successful relationships. The extent of peoples' common experiences strengthen and sustain relationships, even when contact levels may be minimal at times. The degree of emotional intensity in the experiences also drives memorability.

While social networking allows for many more "shared" experiences, it doesn't facilitate a comparable expansion in emotional capacity. Thinking about Twitter, it's clear an RT or a brief DM exchange provides little emotional impact. That makes it tough to remember some people you may have engaged with even a few months ago.

For those with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, it's no different than an offline star: emotional intensity isn't always bi-directional , i.e., fans have intensely emotional experiences with (Twitter rock) stars who have no emotional connection in return.

Beyond simply managing numbers, it's important to manage how you create opportunities for shared experiences online and offline, (i.e., participate in tweetups) and emotional connections within your network over time. By actively, acting on these variables, you can introduce new shared experiences to help keep a waning relationship going within an expanding network. - Mike Brown

Quit Complaining and Be Smarter

2010-01-15T04:50:00.001-06:00

Find yourself mired in an organization (and feel free to substitute relationship, school, whatever outside entity you want here) that isn’t working for you?

No matter what you do, you’re not able to advance ideas, get things done, or maybe even feel like you’re being heard. Worse yet, you can't afford to walk away even though your frustration feels like it's eating you up inside.

Sound familiar?

Wonder what you can do?

Here’s an idea – quit complaining and channel your energy into being smarter and more innovative than the system in which you’re stuck! Possible approaches:

Take the weekend, plan your strategy, be positive, and come in as a new person this Monday! - Mike Brown

Not Even One of These Things Is Not Like Another

2010-01-14T04:50:00.002-06:00

I was in my first meeting the other day of a group expected to help shape strategy for an organization with domestic and international reach to a mainly young audience. Of the eleven people present, ten were Caucasian males (mostly baby boomers), and the other was a Caucasian female baby boomer.

Ok, big problem looming!

Next time you're on an input-giving or decision making group, look around at the participants. If you're lacking diversity on any important dimension relevant to your target audience, voice a concern.

In this case, after challenging ourselves on the group's composition, one member offered to have his wife take his place. Nice sentiment, but hardly a fix for the underlying problem.

Leaders need to aggressively look out for diversity and ensure it's taken into consideration, even when it means reaching far outside their traditional networks to include different people. Beyond being an issue of propriety, it's critical for innovation and sound strategic decision making. - Mike Brown

11 Ways to Back Out of a Creative Dead End

2010-01-13T04:50:00.002-06:00

Most of the US has been pounded with cold and snow the past few weeks. Don’t know about you, but it makes me feel my creative spirit is at a dead end when things outside are cold, bleak, and dark.

So what to do to turn a creative “dead end” into a “live start”?

Here are the ideas I wrote down for myself the other day to break out of my creative doldrums:

Be around fun people
Spend some fun time with my wife
Nap without worrying about losing valuable time
Go someplace bright and warm
Go someplace dark and warm
Finish something (realizing that, unfortunately, blogs aren’t ever done unless you quit them)
Find someone who loves something I created
Seek out people who have good news to share
Appreciate what I have
Get worn out from working out and quit eating holiday treats
Make a cool handwritten font

That’s what I’ve been trying. Please add your ideas to the list too! – Mike Brown

How to Succeed Where Strategy Is a Bad Thing

2010-01-12T04:50:00.002-06:00

In many circles, "strategy" has become a bad word, right up there with "creativity," "innovation," and even "thinking." There clearly are business people who see strategy as mucking up getting things done. For them, strategy is perceived as simply adding time, cost, and complexity. It’s viewed as an impediment to running a business successfully. And by “successfully,” I mean “by the seat of their pants.”

To try getting a toehold for introducing a strategic perspective in these environments, we talk about strategy at Brainzooming as "addressing what matters with insight and innovation.”

It's tough for executives to argue against the "what matters" part, especially when making a case for something tactical as REALLY important. It forces them to put up or shut up if an idea is more of a pet project than a fundamental business issue.

Granted, "insight" is a little easier to sell-in than innovation; people don't want to be "dumb" about the work they're doing even when they're willing to accept a "status quo" mindset.

The clear implication the past few years is the simpler and more straightforward the definitions, process, and deliverables of strategy creation and implementation are, the more likely something successful will happen. – Mike Brown

Whenever I Call You Friend

2010-01-11T04:50:00.002-06:00

A year ago, a “friend” was someone I’d almost certainly met in person. We had come to know one another through shared personal experiences. Keeping in touch was enjoyable, even if through infrequent phone or email exchanges.

One year later, having used Twitter and the Brainzooming blog in a strategy to “meet” people globally, my concept of friendship has been dramatically expanded.

Now, there are “friends” I have:

Never spoken to directly and may never speak to via phone, and certainly not in person.
Come to know through shared online experiences, typically in messages of 140 characters, that have nevertheless provided memorable insights into their personalities.
Been excited to see show up (via their avatars) and communicate with on Twitter, the blog, or in my email.

This expanded group of friends has enriched my life tremendously. They’ve shared their expertise, talents, ideas, creativity, reading lists, suggestions, and personal cheerleading so generously. I communicate with many of them weekly, and know them better than IRL people I’ve been around for years.

All this is a remarkable transformation in perspective, especially considering for a number of these new friends, I don’t even know their full names.

In what innovative ways has your definition of “friend” been changed by social media? – Mike Brown

Advice for 2010

2010-01-08T04:50:00.001-06:00

Be a contrarian this year - Think when others are reacting. Get antsy when everyone's comfortable. Innovate when you don't have to innovate.

Embrace dramatic change - Go against the "change one thing and test" strategy. Get friendly with chaos and change lots of things at once.

Get more from your life - Live today with wonder as if it were your first day. Create as if it were the only day you have. Be as bold as if today were your last. - Mike Brown

3 Must-Haves for Driving Social Media

2010-01-07T04:50:00.002-06:00

The title topic came up recently on Twitter, as it had at a B2B social media roundtable late last year: Who should be doing social media strategy and implementation for a brand - organizationally and individually?

My take is a strategic perspective is the foundation for a social media effort to build a sustaining impact. When it comes to questions of social media strategy "ownership," it's clear sole responsibility for it doesn't fit nicely into a box on today's org charts.

Stepping back from the discussions, I forced myself into three criteria which seem necessary for taking on social media responsibilities in corporations:

Ability to always be on message for the brand, which implies effectively linking brand strategy to messaging

Appropriate sensibilities for social media channels

Diverse communication skills that work across various social media channels

Sometimes those people are in marketing communications, but you may find them in other parts of a company as well. They may also exist outside a company's employee base; that's fine too.

Most importantly, given the rapid pace of social media, you want the best strategic writers crafting the communication. Where are these people located in and around your company? Find them wherever they may be! - Mike Brown

Everybody in the Pool (or Snow Drift) for the Brand Promise

2010-01-06T04:50:00.001-06:00

Trends are pushing brands into innovative channels to sell their products and services. These strategies include going through intermediaries who resell, repackage, aggregate, or creates marketplaces for multiple providers' offerings. These arrangements have been the rise and ruin of many brands.

A specific challenge for parties in these intermediary relationships is that each brand visible to the end customer is bringing its individual brand promise to the sale. In turn, each becomes responsible for the aggregate brand promise, making it critical for various individual promises to fit together in a sensible way for customers. It's also vital that each provider (and its employees) can and do carry out the aggregate promise of whatever's being offered.

Our experience last week highlighted the challenges involved. Trying to get our driveway cleared of 9 inches of snow before returning from a trip, we used ServiceMagic.com. It promises to identify a short list of screened and approved professionals for home repair and contracting work, backed with a seal of approval and a guarantee.

We chose the first one to contact us (whose name can best be described as "Generic Subdivision Name Lawn and Garden" company).

Here's the rub. Beyond whatever else ServiceMagic promises, its name implies something more. It's not operating under a generic lawn and garden company name. Adding the name "Magic" into the collective brand promise implies an enhanced sense of delight and wonder with the service performed.

Unfortunately, we returned home to find the snow removal only partially completed. The porch, walk, and driveway were still half covered in snow - hardly a magic moment. A call to the snow removal company didn't get someone back to do the work by the next morning. I wound up finishing the project, shooting a video before and after to substantiate what was and wasn't done.

As of this posting, no one's contacted us and we haven't been invoiced by anyone. Maybe that's the "magic" part of the service. If this is the case though, it would be a more magic strategy if someone called to say, "Hey, we screwed up, and it's free!" Doing so would ensure our return for more performances! - Mike Brown

When People Don’t Understand There Are Lots of Ways to Be Right

2010-01-05T04:50:00.001-06:00

What’s your first reaction to a new possibility? And importantly, what are typical reactions to new possibilities from the people who surround you? Lately, I’m encountering more people whose first reaction is why something won’t work, how they know better than I do about it, or who simply react with a hostile tone.

For someone who espouses openness to ideas, I’m seeing detrimental impacts on my attitude. When you hear enough negatives, it can lead you to also start reacting negatively to new possibilities out of frustration, spite, or self-protection.

What to do in this type of situation? Overtly model positive behavior and hope they get it? Challenge them directly on how they dampen creativity? Leave the relationship for the sake of creative self-preservation?

No single answer works - each choice has its own advantages and peculiar stumbling blocks. Sounds like some type of combo is in order. We’ll see how that possibility works. – Mike Brown

Stop Right There, Before We Go Any Further

2010-01-04T04:50:00.000-06:00

Okay, it’s the time for 2009 reviews and 2010 look aheads.

So, what did you stop doing in 2009?

Stopping something counts as “doing something.” And in a period when time demands are coming at us from more ways than ever, it’s okay to quit things that aren’t contributing or adding as much value to your life as other things.

So, what did you quit in 2009?

Answering the question myself, I had a big quit (my long time job) in 2009 and a variety of slow downs (i.e., less activity than previously expended while still keeping something going). I probably didn’t quit enough things in 2009 though and certainly didn’t quit as many things as I started.

How about you?

For me, 2010 feels like it’s going to be a year of more quits. That’s because there will need to be a bunch of starts and trials this coming year. It will be one of dramatic changes and will require repeatedly identifying what isn’t valuable anymore and needs to go "bye-bye." One of the things I'm considering for the quit list is daily posting on Brainzooming in favor of a several times a week schedule. Would definitely appreciate your reactions to the idea before it's a final decision!

If your stop doing list from 2009 also seemed too short, start deciding what you’ll be quitting in the next 12 months. – Mike Brown

10 Years Ago Today

2009-12-31T04:50:00.006-06:00

Ten years ago today, December 31, 1999, I met Jan Harness, my (then future) creative instigation partner, via phone call.

When I've shared the specifics of first talking with Jan, people have commented how sweet it is I remember the event in such detail. Really though, the story's a great example of creating memorable brand experiences.

A post last October spelled out a formula for memorable brand experiences springing from the convergence of three factors - personal interests, emotional intensity, and a brand's role in the experience. Against that framework, here's how the story of meeting Jan played out:

High Personal Interest - I was charged with creating presentations for our company's introductory 2,000 person customer conference which was barely 2 weeks away. Among the challenges, there was no convincing the CIO that with Y2K looming, nobody cared about the history of the computer - her desired way to open her speech. With many other presentations also needing massive amounts of writing effort, it seemed so hopeless my boss was finally convinced I needed outside help for it all to get done.

Emotional Intensity - The conference was a big deal, with high expectations for success. We were having various production issues, so the pressure was intensifying as time slipped away. The news was also filled with stories about the ominous potential danger from Y2K. All that led to a pretty vivid sense of the date when Jan and Barb Pruitt got on the phone to see how they might be able to help rescue me.

A (Personal) Brand's Role in Enabling the Experience - We quickly figured out the basis of how we'd work, and Jan got started. Within the two weeks leading up to the conference, Jan came in, learned our company and the presenters, and dramatically improved our ability to creatively communicate our important messages. In fact, she had such an impact before the show that she became part of the traveling team responsible for the conference’s on-site production.

So you see, with the high level of personal interest (creating a successful conference from one that was teetering), emotional intensity (both personal emotions and the global emotion and visibility of what 1/1/2000 held), and an incredible brand experience (Jan's amazing contribution and the start of our creative team), there's no way the experience wouldn't be indelibly fixed in my mind.

As a side note, Jan and I have a brother/sister kind of creative relationship, i.e. we pick on each other (okay maybe it's me picking on Jan) constantly. Yet when @lqualls4444 asked the other day on Twitter if Jan knew how much I appreciate her contribution to my creativity, it was great to say, "Yes." Amid a recent late night email rant, I'd shared "lavish praise" for Jan's talents. Here's an excerpt:

"...this experience has reinforced for me not only what a talented writer you are, but that you are the [dare I say] unique [or at least relatively rare] strategist who happens to also be a fantastic writer. There's a HUGE difference between getting words into sentences and a bunch of sentences on a page and organizing thinking, themes, and words in a consistent, strategic flow. You are the best of anyone I've ever worked with at doing that. You create tremendously high expectations for others after having worked with you, and I'm not sure there are many out there who can meet them!!!"

So, if you need a great strategist who also happens to write fantastically, seek out my creative instigation partner of 10 years, Jan Harness! - Mike Brown

The Twelfth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Look for the Improbable to Happen!

2009-12-17T04:50:00.001-06:00

We don't have kids, something we came to terms with relatively early in our marriage and have accepted as part of life. While it means missing out on a range of incredible experiences, we've been able to do things for others (particularly our niece and nephews) that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. The net of it is accepting what life hands you and making the best of it.

Last year, our niece Valerie called and asked to speak with me. This was unusual, but as I've written before, Valerie has lived an unusual life. That includes getting married initially in a group wedding ceremony on Valentine's Day 2008 at Loveland Pass. This was an event the family first learned about when my mother-in-law saw it reported on the Weather Channel!

When Valerie began talking about a second wedding ceremony where friends and family could be present, I was hesitant since we'd have to play a big role in putting it on.

As the phone conversation began, I told her our ability to help was limited since her cousin was getting married about the same time and we might have to get Valerie's grandma to it. While stating my case, Valerie interrupted to ask, "Would you walk me down the aisle?"

Walking a bride down the aisle was something I'd long ago come to accept as an "I'll never get to do it" moment. Suddenly my tone changed and being able to do something I never thought I would do completely changed my perspective. I was all for wedding ceremony #2 and making it happen.

The life-changing lesson here is the important reminder to remain perpetually hopeful. Things you think can never happen can happen. If there are possibilities you've shut out of your life, maybe it's time to open them back up.

And in true Valerie fashion, she followed her life-changing comment with another incredibly touching one. As we were getting ready to walk into the ceremony, she told me, "Who else would I have asked to give me away. With everything you guys have done for me, you're like my father."

That's Valerie!

Wrap-up: Hope you enjoyed this series on life-changing words! For the rest of 2009, I'm going to focus on getting ready to consolidate the Brainzooming and MikeBrownSpeaks blogs into a new location that Seth Simonds has done great work in setting up.

The new site will have the blog and include more information on the Brainzooming business and our service offerings. It will also feature additional tools not able to be included on the Blogger platform. The transition date is still TBD, because when it happens, I want to make sure it's as seamless as possible for email and RSS subscribers.

That's what's coming, so in the meantime, have a great holiday and rest of 2009! Thanks for reading Brainzooming! - Mike Brown

The Eleventh Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Maintaining the Higher Moral Ground

2009-12-16T04:50:00.003-06:00

Bob Nugent was a year behind me in grade school. We didn't really have much contact until college where we were both involved in student government and wound up spending lots of time together as part of an interesting (at least to us), somewhat nerdy political clique.

At one point, several student organizations found themselves embroiled in what passed for college campus controversy in those days. Let's just say, it was quite a bit less important than the anti-war protests of our predecessors on campus years earlier.

As various groups and individuals were angling for the upper hand in what might be the ultimate resolution of the issue, Bob talked about the necessity of "maintaining the higher moral ground."

By this phrase, he meant the importance of displaying the upright conduct that allows you to deflect criticism potentially coming your way. The phrase "higher moral ground" resonated so strongly, I've used the idea repeatedly in reminding myself of the importance of not extending your own moral point of view beyond a standard against which you are willing to be judged.

Years later, I discovered the concept addressed in a New Testament passage from the letter to Titus:

"...show(ing) yourself as a model of good deeds in every respect, with integrity in your teaching, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be criticized, so that the opponent will be put to shame without anything bad to say about us." - Titus 2:7-8

When I first heard it, I was clear this was a description of the "higher moral ground." Bob's words from college came full circle for me as a foundational life practice.

Maintaining the higher moral ground is a challenging standard for anyone, but in an age when there's such interest in seeing people fall, it's never been more important to be able to live it out successfully.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Tenth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Reclaim Your Self-Perspective

2009-12-15T04:50:00.003-06:00

When I did the "12 Days of Gifts" series last year, a post about my grandfather showed up from who knows where, since I hadn't even contemplated it when the series started. Today's post was similarly unanticipated, especially since in a string of posts about gifts of life-changing words, this one was life-changing, but not necessarily a gift!

Early in high school, I was talking with another student on the steps outside school. During the conversation, he asked, "How many times has your nose been broken?"

I told him, "Never."

The question started me thinking though about what was wrong with my nose to prompt his query. It was one of those "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" moments, where all of a sudden I realized my nose was crooked and kind of big. Considering I wasn't all that pleased with my looks anyway, it became a defining moment in confirming some negative and lingering self-perceptions.

While I advocate living to serve others, it needn't mean letting them define you. That's certainly easier said than done, and to show I don't only share challenges I've already conquered, here are questions for all of us: Are there comments others have made that we've let define ourselves negatively? If so, why are we still hanging on to them?

Maybe now, after all these years, it's time to flush them and redefine ourselves in positive new ways.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Ninth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Reserve Judgments

2009-12-14T04:50:00.002-06:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" begins with its narrator, Nick Carraway, recounting his father's admonition that not everyone in the world is provided the same advantages. The comment led to Nick's inclination to "reserve all judgments," a "habit that...opened up many curious natures" to him.

This opening passage of "Gatsby" has shaped me dramatically. Amid growing up in an environment of clear rights and wrongs, these words were a reminder to delay judgment in order to better understand people, even those who are objectively well outside my behavioral beliefs.

Given the importance of suspending judgment in the early stages of originating new ideas, this practice has been fundamental to helping businesses imagine new possibilities for potential opportunities. There's a time for judgment, but initially, ideas have to emerge and "breathe" first.

It isn't all glorious, however, when you reserve judgments. As Nick notes, it led to him being "the victim of not a few veteran bores." I've certainly found that to be the case. It's also led to having a diverse set of friends (really fun) who at times can't stand one another (not so fun). Their distinct differences, which I tend to overlook, often make them incompatible.

In all, delaying judgments is a beneficial practice. So what do you think? Are there a few situations in your life right now where you'd be better off to suspend judgment and see how they play out first? The interesting things you'll experience and learn will FAR outweigh any bores you might encounter. Just go with me on this - okay?

BTW - Want a little "fun" with "The Great Gatsby"? Watch this video of Andy Kaufman trying to read the book to a reluctant audience. You can skip ahead to 2:40 to hear the passage that inspired this post!

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Eighth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Protecting People from Themselves

2009-12-11T04:50:00.003-06:00

When Cyndi signed me up to work out with a trainer in 2006, the first meeting included a diet inventory. This entailed listing everything typically eaten throughout the day along with other food and cooking preferences.

As the trainer reviewed the responses, there was apparently a problem with me eating homemade ice cream for breakfast every morning. I had done so for years because it was quick, tasted wonderful, and even I could prepare my own breakfast when all it amounted to was scooping ice cream.

The trainer commented sternly, however, "You can't eat ice cream for breakfast."

I was shocked that eating ice cream every morning was THAT big a deal (hey, it's dairy - which IS a food group). Yet having someone challenge me on it was a huge part of making me take a step back and change my behavior. I subsequently completely revamped my health practices, started eating the right things, cut food portions in half, and exercised regularly to lose more than 25 pounds.

Do you know someone who is going blissfully along, unaware he or she is doing something potentially damaging? If so, do the person a favor and challenge them on it. It could be a life-changing moment. - Mike Brown

The Seventh Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Focus on Other People

2009-12-10T04:50:00.001-06:00

Early in college, I'd hit a major rut, dissatisfied with myself and an inability to effectively interact with people who were unfamiliar or encountered during casual situations. It was the first time the challenges many introverts face became overwhelming. After one particularly frustrating incident, I gave in to my father's long-term urgings to embrace self-help books and agreed to read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

The book changed my life by pointing out the value of focusing on other peoples' interests, concerns, and motivations instead of my own as a fundamental principle in advancing ideas and accomplishing success. One of the most memorable suggestions was, "Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."

While acting on the book's ideas required working hard to become more outgoing in new interpersonal situations (something which has taken years, and is still an ongoing effort), Carnegie's emphasis on listening to others played to an introvert's strengths. All of a sudden a situation that seemed hopeless became very much in reach to start improving right away.

My recommendation to you? If you've never read "How to Win Friends and Influence People," get a copy and put it into action. Although it's decades old, it's a fundamental handbook for creating successful, important relationships. And for me, I'm going to review it as a refresher for both IRL interactions and to consider how I am doing in translating the ideas into the social media world. - Mike Brown

The Sixth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Live Out a Positive Life

2009-12-09T04:50:00.002-06:00

My dad came back from Ed Foreman’s Successful Life Course in the mid 1980s with a new favorite word, “TERRIFIC!!!” as the all-the-time answer to the question, “How are you doing?”

Back then, it was bothersome to me because it was clear he wasn’t always TERRIFIC. Years later after listening to some of Foreman’s tapes and seeing him live, I finally understood the reason for saying “TERRIFIC!!!” all the time. The point is words precede attitudes and attitudes precede actions. Saying you’re TERRIFIC gets you in the mental mindset that will ultimately lead you to act as if you are TERRIFIC!!! all the time.

I got it and tried to embrace the belief, yet couldn’t get myself to say TERRIFIC. My version is, “Wonderful!" It's certainly more understated, yet still far more positive than I would have ever answered previously. I’ll admit I don't always come off sounding "Wonderful," but the greeting does stand out and helps keep me honest about being thankful for the MANY truly wonderful aspects of life.

So, how are you doing?

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Fifth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Creating Ridiculous Growth Opportunities

2009-12-08T04:50:00.002-06:00

At a company-first sales conference, we'd scheduled Tommy Lasorda as a surprise second-day speaker. My boss (a very different boss than in yesterday's post) was set to emcee the whole conference, yet at the end of day one, he said, “I have to spend the afternoon with Tommy Lasorda, so you emcee tomorrow afternoon.” Startled (and a little scared) by his comment considering there was no script and no rehearsal time, I took on the assignment the next day.

As it turned out, it was an incredible opportunity to be in front of the entire company’s sales team for a whole afternoon. With a pretty boring agenda of speakers, it created opportunities as the emcee to be interactive, funny, and get the entire audience to stand up and scream at the top of their lungs. That night, so many people came up to say they had no idea I was funny. In one afternoon, I went from being a quiet research guy to having a personality within the company and incredibly shaping the next decade of my career.

There are tremendous benefits for your team members (and for you) when you're willing to create ridiculous challenges and great opportunities to make them grow in ways no one else would ever imagine.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Fourth Day of Life-Changing Gifts - You Can Learn From Anybody

2009-12-07T04:50:00.003-06:00

Early in my career, I was struggling with delivering a project in a way that moved our efforts along adequately, even though I had been doing good work. In reviewing a draft with my boss, she asked in frustration, “Do you understand what the function of our department is?”

I was shocked by the question, and while it brought me up short, it did NOTHING to help solve the challenge in front of me. It was an opportunity to teach, but she decided to take a shot instead.

So how was this life-changing?

This and many other actions and comments she made over time helped shaped my managerial style – to do everything opposite of what she did!

I learned a lot technically, but perhaps most importantly, learned an incredible amount about how a bad boss can disintegrate employee loyalty and allegiance. Everybody who has worked for me since has been the beneficiary.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Third Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Giving the Okay to Challenge Thinking

2009-12-04T04:50:00.003-06:00

Early in his tenure, our CEO shared his ten business principles. I don’t remember nine of them, but one stood out for of its simplicity, matter-of-factness, and wide applicability: “Don’t do anything stupid.”

I've used this admonition numerous times when attempting to slow (and ideally thwart) ill-founded ideas others felt really strongly about pursuing. When you can invoke the CEO's own words, it provides a lot more credibility in challenging dumb stuff and trying to do the right things for the business.

The approach's success oriented me toward the tremendous leadership benefits of sharing what really matters in easy-to-understand words. If you can get your message distilled in a simple, clear way, it frees up team members to use their own perspectives and innovative spirits in beneficial ways a leader could never anticipate. I've written several times about my own struggle for simplicity and have tried to take this learning to heart.

As an example, I was leading a motor sports program in what was then called the Busch Series. It's considered to be a second-tier series in NASCAR behind the "Cup" series, where everything costs 3 to 5 times more to sponsor. Our challenge was creating a program with a top tier Cup sponsorship's impact with a relatively small investment. This potential dilemma was at the heart of our internal program strategy: "We're doing a Cup level program with a Busch Series budget." With that direction, the team understood our constraints and was freed to be more creative and challenging in how we attacked our goals.

Think about what simple strategic guidelines you can share with your team to help them be more effective in carrying out the most important activities.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The Second Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Focusing on What's Really Important

2009-12-03T04:50:00.005-06:00

A friend from church gave me a tape several years ago by Fr. Larry Richards, a Catholic priest and evangelist, who does a broad series of talks on faith topics. In one about our "life’s purpose," he discussed the need for a spirit of sacrifice. In doing so, he talked about a poster in his office which said, “Every time I think I’ve sacrificed everything, God asks me for something I’m not willing to give up.”

Amid all the concerns vying to command our attention, this question is a constant reminder to embrace a sense of detachment from the falsely "important." And at a time when I was challenging myself on what WAS important, this statement had a dramatic impact. It was a big part of reorienting my life's goals and core purpose away from monetary concerns to spiritual and sacrificial ones, which have much more permanency. I've adapted the question for use in presentations, asking, “At the end of your life, what will you look back on from your life that will cause you to smile?”

Contemplating these questions is so appropriate this time of year when it’s easy to become enchanted with things that will be long forgotten when our time here is over.

Note: This is one of a series of posts on life-changing gifts. - Mike Brown

The First Day of Life-Changing Gifts - Helping Another Recognize Their Talents

2009-12-02T04:50:00.006-06:00

Chuck Dymer is a strategic mentor, having done more than any single person to help me understand lateral thinking processes and how integral they are to business success. You could say I've borrowed everything I know on innovation tools from watching Chuck do what he does so masterfully.

After working with Chuck on various projects, he said to me, “You make other people more creative just by cheering them on.” While always enjoying participating in brainstorming sessions with others, its potential impact had never occurred to me.

Chuck's comment, though, caused more deliberate reflection on this "talent" I’d never considered and how it could be used more widely. This led to incorporating lateral thinking approaches into additional business activities, speaking topics, and ultimately, Brainzooming.

Are you working with others who display talents you see that they don't realize? Give them a gift by pointing out these talents so they can start considering how to use them even more beneficially. - Mike Brown

Twelve Days of Life-Changing Gifts

2009-12-01T04:50:00.002-06:00

There was a Brainzooming series last December called “Twelve Days of Gifts” featuring stories of gifts (i.e., lessons) people had shared to shape my personal and business life. It was well-received, prompting its return, with a slight variation, this December.

The next twelve days' articles will be based on life-changing words – statements or questions people made, either directly or indirectly, with dramatic impacts. Few (maybe none) were intended as life-changing, and granted, you may find some are BIG "L" Life-Changers and others are little "l." In any event, each has affected me in a profound way.

My holiday hope is some of them will also stimulate tremendous changes in how you approach life as well! - Mike Brown

12 Steps to Grow Diversity in Your Personal Network

2009-11-30T04:50:00.004-06:00

Look at your network now compared to last year. Have you dramatically expanded the number of people you can call or email and be reasonably sure you'll get a response from them?

And that doesn't mean from loading up on contacts inside your company using the "People You May Know" feature on LinkedIn. A network gains value through diversity - not from having 75% of your connections riding on the same economic train as you!

If your active network looks the same as it did last year, ACT NOW when ideally you don't need your network's benefits. Here are 12 potential ways to add not only numbers, but diversity to your network:

Join and actively participate in professional associations
Regularly attend (and even create) networking events and follow up on connections
Take on leadership roles in church, school, or alumni organizations
Deliberately try to network with other parents at kids' activities
Write articles for publications within your industry
Speak publicly on topics of expertise for you (and if you're reluctant to speak, join Toastmasters and get over your apprehensions)
Use Twitter to build a global network of people involved in topics of interest (Twitter Lists or WeFollow are great places to start)
Run for public office
Find and join groups focused on hobbies you enjoy
Share your expertise via social media - start a blog, comment on other blogs, record podcasts or video blogs
Start a second job where you interact more with the public
Strike up conversations with people you meet standing in line

And IMPORTANTLY, have business cards with you and introduce yourself to new people with your first and last names. I can't believe how many people go to networking events and don't have cards and/or introduce themselves by mumbling their first names.

Not all of these methods make sense for everyone. For my networking strategy, numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, and 10 have all been very effective at meeting great new people both online and in IRL (in real life), especially by starting to attend and even organize tweet-ups.

There are certainly several of these that will work for you, so pick and get started adding diversity to your network! - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Double the Fun, If You Follow the Rules!

2009-11-25T04:50:00.009-06:00

The Baskin Robbins Double Header Cone screams, "I came out of an innovation session!"

That's okay though because it appears from the outside-looking-in to have a solid customer experience-based strategic foundation.

An ice cream cone allowing multiple flavors and formats side by side lets customers preferring cones experience them in a new, fun way. Who can beat two different ice cream flavors and formats (soft serve and scoop) the way YOU want to combine them, instead of randomly (mashed scoops), sequentially (scoops on top of each other), or in a forced swirl (for soft serve)?

It's fun for kids (who seemed to be the primary audience the day we were in Baskin Robbins) and probably makes a parent's life a little saner (since it helps more easily please a kid wanting multiple flavors). For Baskin Robbins, it creates some near term buzz and introduces a new, slightly higher price point to upsell customers who'd typically only buy a single cone.

Unfortunately, the poster's fine print clearly states "no substitutions." You can't have two scoops or two soft serve flavors. The Double Header cone "fun" doesn't extend to customer-driven innovation at the point of sale.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving (US-based readers), and be on the look-out for "out and about marketing" examples to share here! Brainzooming is taking a few days off and will be back Monday. - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Making Buying Decisions Simpler

2009-11-24T04:50:00.003-06:00

Product innovation is rampant. Great for providing choices! Crappy for having to choose from among them.

So it's smart product strategy for brands to remove uncertainty and apprehension by making decisions simpler for consumers. Interestingly, today's examples of doing this well both come from Sam's Club - home of having to buy more than you'll ever need to get a good deal (especially for a two-person household).

Shopping for cheaper deodorant, the main brand switching factor was getting a product smelling close to my current choice (or at least not smelling weird).

This sealed four-pack of Degree deodorant had a great per unit price. But who likes a great deal on 4 deodorants only to find out after buying it that it smells like perfume?

How to avoid this deal breaker? Ingenious marketing to the rescue!

This multi-pack included a scratch-and-sniff label on the left of the package allowing me to smell the deodorant before buying. It was close enough, and I switched brands.

Cyndi was getting an early jump on shopping for Christmas baking as she's planning to make hundreds of chocolate chip cookies (among other things). A pallet in the middle of one aisle featured a great buy on 72 ounce bags of Nestle Semi-Sweet "Morsels," the chocolate chips of Nestlé® TOLL HOUSE® cookie recipe fame.

She asked how many bags she'd need since the recipe called for 12 ounces of chocolate chips. Doing the math in my head, I looked over to the stack of chocolate chips to see the math clearly displayed on the packaging: these big bags are good for 6 batches of cookies each. Since math skills are probably declining at the same rate product proliferation is increasing, how innovative to simplify the math and create happier cookie makers.

And by the way Nestlé®, maybe you should up the recipe to 18 ounces of chocolate chips? That's 50% more in sales for you and even happier cookie eaters! - Mike Brown

Out and About Marketing - Coca-Cola and Ore-Ida Experience Marketing

2009-11-23T04:50:00.004-06:00

Admission - I quickly grow impatient (yet only slightly unruly) in crowded stores.

Fortunately, my Flip camera has helped keep me out of trouble recently (kind of like Cheerios for geeky adults), creating amusement in finding great marketing strategy examples to capture.

To get you ready for the time spent in stores this week for Thanksgiving preparation and Black Friday, we'll share a few "out and about marketing" examples this week. Be on the look-out for ones you see and submit them as future guest Brainzooming posts!

Merchandising Can Be Experience Marketing

Why have boring grocery store displays when they can be colorful, fun, and create memorable visual experiences? These two stacks of soft drink boxes for Coca-Cola products are from two local grocery stores - Price Chopper (left) and Hy-Vee (right).

While the pumpkin at Price Chopper was just plain fun, the Hy-Vee display was a top-five highlight for the Kansas City Chiefs this season!

Taking the Experience Home

This product makes me both proud and ashamed to be in marketing.

Talk about turning a generic category (tater tots) into an experience for multiple audiences. These Ore-Ida ABC Tater Tots are innovation rock stars on multiple levels!

For parents, they combine two high interest experiences - learning and getting kids to eat. For kids who enjoy school, they're great fun; for those that hate school, it allows them to work out a little aggression on these dreaded Sesame Street sponsors. Plus, I love how easily you can imagine the idea coming straight out of a Trait Transformation exercise!

So why do they also make me ashamed to be a marketer?

Because they're tater tots! How much cool brand experience does it take to get ANYBODY, let alone kids, to eat tater tots? I LOVE tater tots, but they're not "trainer-approved." So how about applying cool brand experience strategy to vegetables and fruits that are less processed, less fun, and healthier! - Mike Brown

How a Category-Creating Jersey Deal Set the Stage for an Industry-Centric MLS Cup - Guest Post by John Digles

2009-11-22T09:30:00.005-06:00

I met John Digles in June 2009 as he produced video interviews for the Business Marketing Association Conference. John's background is fascinating; he's an award-winning film maker whose work has gained critical notice, including at the Sundance Film Festival.

John is also founder of entrepreneurial incubator StrategyDeli and sits on the DePaul University Marketing MBA Advisory Council. As Chief Marketing Officer of XanGo, John implemented a number of innovative programs, including:

Negotiating a category-creating jersey-front deal with Major League Soccer
Creating the award-winning XanGo.TV social media site
Leading an international marketing program in more than 25 markets

John's innovative track record earned him an invitation to address the WFDSA World Conference XIII in Singapore.

Sponsorships represent great marketing opportunities if approached strategically and with activation plans fitting a brand's business objectives. Today, John shares his perspective on how XanGo put together an innovative sponsorship program that's led to the brand being featured in tonight's Major League Soccer championship on ESPN.

Jersey-front sponsorships are a long-running international soccer tradition. Global corporations such as Samsung and bwin invest millions supporting top teams and showcasing their brands on the playing fields of the world’s most popular sport. But when XanGo, a 4-year old emerging nutritionals leader and direct sales company based in Utah, inked the first jersey-front sponsorship in U.S. Major League Soccer history in November 2006, it was the first of its kind in North American professional sports.

The innovative deal to place the XanGo brand on the jersey-front of Real Salt Lake (RSL) was a perfect fit for the XanGo healthy lifestyle brand and its reputation as a “company of firsts.” We faced risks, however, that come with introducing this kind of advertising. Some wondered if American soccer fans would accept a branded jersey, while others considered a direct sales company an unlikely sponsor.

Exploring the jersey sponsorship, we formulated an activation program designed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of independent XanGo distributors and “make every game a home game” for RSL. Reaching a new consumer constituency would provide opportunity for distributors to teach the business as they filled the stands and hosted their own events at local soccer matches.

XanGo rolled out with an advanced digital strategy and a branded web site celebrating the game and teaching soccer basics. Research showed the site became a destination for parents whose kids were discovering soccer and joining leagues across the country. Many of these visitors learned about XanGo for the first time.

XanGo distributors and employees made RSL’s branded kit one of the league’s top-selling jerseys. FIFA Soccer by EA Sports, one of the world’s most-popular video games, featured XanGo on the jersey of the game’s RSL team. And the XanGo Cup hosted friendly exhibitions between RSL and international soccer superpowers – and their TV audiences.

Measurement data showed the jersey deal became a key factor in boosting global brand recognition, web traffic, and recruitment.

Weeks after the XanGo sponsorship announcement, David Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy and global nutrition and direct sales company Herbalife secured the next jersey-front deal. Jersey sponsorships with major brands followed around the league, including BMO with Toronto FC, Best Buy with the Chicago Fire, and Amway Global with the San Jose Earthquakes.

Network marketing is a passionate, loyalty-driven business. As direct sales brands cut their jersey deals, distributors from each sponsoring company became more vocal and competitive in showing support.

Three years after the first jersey-front deal, Real Salt Lake and the L.A. Galaxy have reached the MLS Cup, taking two direct sales titans to the league’s biggest stage.

While the category-creating deal surprised some, the trend of direct sales sponsorships has aligned thriving nutrition brands with the game, increased consumer awareness of the business and converted millions of passionate distributors into active fans for Major League Soccer. - John Digles

Getting Ready for 2010: Planning in a Recession - Guest Post by Barrett Sydnor

2009-11-20T04:50:00.004-06:00

Today's guest post addressing preparing for 2010 comes from Barrett Sydnor, one of the first guest authors ever on Brainzooming back in early 2008. I've worked with Barrett on various strategic planning projects over the past 15 years, including quite a bit of quantitative industry analysis and supply/demand forecasting.

Today, he's addressing the right marketing stance to have during and coming out of a recession:

Fortune Favors the Bold.

The Roman playwright Terence wrote that in the 2nd century BC, though Virgil often gets credit because a similar line later appears in the Aeneid. Terence was probably talking about the military strategy of some emperor, but it turns out that the sentiment applies to businesses—small and large—as they face figuring out how to plan for 2010.

A natural tendency when looking at bad or uncertain times is to hunker down, keep spending to a minimum, and stay with what you have done in the past. Natural, but maybe not smart.

A Hurwitz & Associates report found that 65% of small businesses that expected increased revenues during 2009 had raised or planned to increase marketing spending. Increased revenues were expected by only 30% of those who were keeping marketing spend flat, and almost half (41%) of those who were cutting marketing spend were expecting a decrease in revenue.

This correlates with a study done at Penn State after the 2000 recession. The authors say that using what they call “proactive marketing” can allow firms to improve both capital market and business performance during a recession. They cite increased marketing spending by P&G, Kellogg, Intel, and Wal-Mart during recessions—and depressions—as a way to grab or consolidate dominant market shares.

For sports fans, one way to restate “Fortune Favors the Bold,” is “The Best Defense is a Good Offense.” You might ask, "How did that work out for Bill Belichick and the Patriots against the Colts?" While the execution lacked, he had the science—and the odds on his side (discussion here, here, and here).

In planning, as in coaching football, getting the odds on your side is really is what you are trying to do. Being more aggressive with your 2010 plan may be the way to tilt those odds in your favor. - Barrett Sydnor

Getting Ready for 2010: 3 Real Life Planning Successes

2009-11-19T04:50:00.004-06:00

I'm a proponent of spreading strategic thinking broadly in a company and not readily handing off strategy development to outside parties exclusively. Yet I've been a part of many examples where an outside perspective helped move strategy development ahead much more quickly.

Here are several examples you may be facing where it's good to get outside expertise:

Turning Talk Into a Plan

A small subsidiary's three-person management team was told to get a plan in place to show corporate management the company's direction. They had no planning process and only ten business days to deliver a comprehensive strategic plan. We brought in the Brainzooming process to develop an innovative strategic plan in one day. The output couldn't be simply a bunch of ideas nor could it be only a rote plan with little strategic insight.

Structuring a day-long session using question-based exercises allowed the team to answer questions about the business, participate in exercises to stretch strategic perspectives on competition and opportunities, and come back the next morning to make people and timing decisions on a tight plan to share with the operating president.

As non-planners, they wouldn't have been able to put together a coherent business plan in ten days, but they did understand their business and the general direction they needed to head. We combined their deep knowledge with exercises and facilitation allowing us to challenge and create a strategic flow from their answers. We delivered the best of both worlds - a structured plan reflecting their intent for the business with sound strategic logic and more innovation than they'd have ever brought to it alone. This experience demonstrated the clear benefit of the emerging Brainzooming process.

Stimulating a Management Team that Knows It All

We rolled into town to help a really experienced senior management team tackle annual planning. Because of their tenure and smarts, they knew the company inside- out. This knowledge rendered them ill-suited to solving a long-term growth challenge: as every idea was uttered, they "knew" why it wouldn't work for the brand.

During the course of a day-long planning session, I created a new exercise on the fly based on a brand in a very different industry sharing the same fundamental characteristics of our client. I asked the group to suggest how this other company could address the same challenge they were facing. All of a sudden ideas started flowing non-stop. We were able to take the concepts and strategically apply them to their business.

Left on its own to think strategically, the management team would never have reached an alternative look at its business. An outside perspective, unburdened by excessive detail was critical to identifying an analogous situation, providing an entree for innovative strategic thinking and implementation.

Doing the Thinking for a Distracted Management Team

We had a pre-scheduled planning follow-up with a management team who, since our initial session, had been charged with exploring a major brand contraction. Unable to convince them their new assignment should be the focus for our session, we instead spent time addressing the status quo scenario. Unfortunately, the status quo wasn't likely or compelling enough to command much of their attention and strategic creativity.

Frustrated by the lack of intensity while addressing the status quo, we wrapped the effort early. We told them we'd work on the status quo scenario, delivering 200 prioritized, fleshed out ideas and concepts within 3 days. Using several creativity techniques during the flight home, we generated really strong creative concepts for the status quo or, with some modification, for the alternative scenario also.

This was a great example of the importance of a balanced group in doing the best strategic thinking. The client's management team had business experience and functional knowledge, but was sapped of any creative energy it ever had. Bringing in outside talent for a creative spark was needed to turn lackluster thinking into vibrant, implementable ideas. - Mike Brown

Getting Ready for 2010: Tools to Improve Your Success

2009-11-18T04:50:00.008-06:00

With 2010 looming and the importance of approaching the year with creative business and competitive options, here are links to a variety of tools to help if you're under the gun to get a successful plan completed.

A Foundation on Strategic Thinking

An Overview on What Strategic Means, Who to Involve in Strategy Development, and a Few Strategic Tools

Creating a Strategic Focus

Steps to Re-evaluate and Focus on Important Elements in Your Business

Better Understanding What's Strategic in Your Business

Contingency Planning

Thoughts on Dealing with Uncertainty

Steps to Deal with Planning Amid Uncertainty

Quickly Developing Options When Your Current Plan Isn't Working

Having to "Wing" Your Strategy Because of Uncertainty

Updating Your Current Plan

Re-checking Your Marketing Plan for Completeness

Reviewing and Modifying Your Strategic Direction

Updating a Marketing Plan Under Tight Resources

Implementing Specific Strategic Thrusts

Generating New Ideas When You Need Them

When A More Aggressive Competitive Strategy Is Needed

You're Fighting an Uphill Battle and Need a Contrarian Strategy

Developing a Low-Investment Marketing Strategy

You Have a Turnaround to Fix

Wrapping Up with a Smile on Your Face

The Ultimate in Flexible Strategy

Additionally, Trendwatching.com has released its briefing on "10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010" covering impacts arising from (among other things):

Urbanization
Fragmentation in what constitutes luxury
Increasingly complex online presences
A push for mass IRL interactions emanating from online networks

There are certainly other Brainzooming articles touching on these planning topics, but ideally this short list will get you jump started for current planning efforts you have to complete. - Mike Brown

Getting Ready for 2010: A Strategy Foundation - Guest Post by Keith Prather

2009-11-17T04:50:00.010-06:00

Keith Prather is Managing Director of Armada Corporate Intelligence, a corporate business intelligence firm that functions as outsourced members of corporate strategy groups and consults with companies of all sizes on strategy and implementation. Armada is sponsoring this week of posts on getting ready for 2010 planning.

I've known Keith for nearly a decade and have worked with him closely on a variety of strategic and market planning efforts. Today, I'm excited he's sharing his professional perspectives on getting a better understanding of your external environment during this period of dramatic global change in business and consumer markets:

A critical component of a successful strategic plan is a well-established strategy foundation – a compilation of information and intelligence covering your industry, global markets, customers, and the environment. Particularly relevant this year is the need to produce an accurate economic forecast with meaning and relevance for the business. And given the uncertainty surrounding the global economy, this can be a daunting task.

Following the most basic tenets, forecasters need to identify the supply and demand drivers for an industry, and capture meaningful data describing the condition and outlook for them. Sometimes though the most impactful elements on a business are not what we think. Going to the expense side of the income statement and understanding the biggest cost items in your business will help determine the real key elements of supply – those you rely on.

For instance, one client believed steel (which was one of the company's top expenses) was the primary input for its business, with countless hours spent monitoring, forecasting, and negotiating steel prices. Energy costs, on the other hand, were not considered to have a material impact, and were lumped into utility and overhead costs. In 2008, however, consumption of oil-based resources drove prices up significantly. As a result, oil costs had to be factored much more directly into forecasting models to improve their accuracy. By not anticipating this significant change to the company's business mix, however, it was caught flat footed.

On the demand side, the challenge is more complex. While providing future economic insights for clients, several fundamental items seem to be driving things developments. First, everything ultimately circles back to consumers. You and I, spending money, drives more than 70% of the nation’s $13 trillion in GDP. Watching consumer spending, consumer confidence, housing, and several other metrics tracking consumer activity are useful in helping gauge future activity. One great aggregator site for basic economic information is the US Census Bureau’s Economic Indicator page.

There are some other great free aggregator sites providing solid current economic news and explanations of some of the items driving current activity. One of my favorites is the RTTNews Daily Market Analysis. We also pay a lot of attention to the Financial Times, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, and Global Insight for forecasting information.

For manufacturing, the Institute for Supply Management publishes one of the most accurate gauges of manufacturing activity, the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), on a monthly basis. You can read about the PMI in simple, easy to follow prose at the ISM website.

Calculating risk is also an important component to a well-done strategy foundation. With a wave of new legislation floating around in Congress, it is important for companies to use scenario planning in considering impacts of various regulatory actions on the company. From health care to energy legislation, companies will be hit with direct and indirect risks as a result. Using a system such as the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP) can help in gauging which scenarios provide the greatest risk – and the greatest likelihood of occurring.

It can’t be said enough, a solid strategy foundation is the underpinning to a successful strategic plan. Woodrow Wilson once said: "We should not only use all the brains we have, but all the brains we can borrow." If you can’t build the strategy foundation in-house, it’s worth getting help to make sure that the business landscape is being accurately portrayed. Otherwise, you might be building a ship when what you really need is a bicycle. - Keith Prather

Getting Ready for 2010

2009-11-16T04:50:00.006-06:00

My, how times change!

In the old days, I'd get twitchy if our planning group's attention hadn't turned to readying for the next year's planning by April with completion targeted for early September. Amid a changing business environment, however, those dates got progressively later until the prospect of nearly coincident planning left us unphased.

At the Frost & Sullivan event I participated in during the first week in November, attendees were asked who was still working on 2010 plans. Based on the large percentage of hands raised, it looked like many companies have pushed back planning efforts much later.

As a result, Brainzooming is focused on 2010 planning, providing tips and ideas to prepare your plan for what your marketplace holds next year. Here's what's coming this week:

Tuesday - My Brainzooming Instigation buddy Keith Prather from Armada Corporate Intelligence will highlight approaches and tools to survey your external environment. Armada is sponsoring this week's Brainzooming features on 2010 planning, so beyond upcoming posts on the topic, check out the services Armada offers to help you get through this challenging business period.
Wednesday - Mid-week, we'll feature links to more than 15 Brainzooming articles to support your planning efforts.
Thursday - There are various planning environments you may face. On Thursday, we'll share stories of how Brainzooming has teamed with Armada Corporate Intelligence, using the Brainzooming approach, to successfully address frequent planning challenges.
Friday - Previous guest author Barrett Sydnor of Sydnor and Associates will cover making investment decisions in this business environment.

If you're feeling really under the gun for getting your 2010 plan done on time with the level of rigor to help your business be more successful in 2010, get in touch with Armada today for help with an Idea Generation Session, a Plan Audit, or a Fast-Track plan building session. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Blue Tree

2009-11-13T04:50:00.003-06:00

Brainzenning - Video moments of calm and reflection.

The Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event - Innovation Challenges Roundtable

2009-11-12T04:50:00.002-06:00

I "led" (and by "led," I mean "asked one question and got out of the way") a roundtable on innovation challenges at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event last week with a group of incredible marketers. The only challenge was taking notes fast enough!

The participants included Jeffrey Rohrs (ExactTarget), Andy Shafer (Elevance Renewable Sciences), Sean Cheyney (Accuquote), Steven Handmaker (Assurance), Kathy Zanzucchi (Microflex Corporation), Theresa Kwan-Zangara (Gallagher Benefit Services, Inc.), and Brian Krause (Molex). Here are innovation challenges the participants successfully addressed:

No Process for Channeling Customer Ideas

ExactTarget crowdsources product innovation ideas - 90% of enhancement ideas come from its user community. Additionally, an Idea Lab allows customers on the forefront of its product use to trial changes in a structured environment. (Jeff Rohrs)

Customer Perspectives Are Being Ignored

It's important for marketing to be involved with innovation and new product development efforts to help vet ideas. Without marketing introducing a customer perspective, there's an opportunity for gaps to develop. (Kathy Zanzucchi)

There's No Widespread Understanding of Innovation

Marketing can become more involved and help drive innovation by setting up company-wide training curriculum on innovation. (Sean Cheyney)

No Motivation to Share Ideas

One way to stimulate employee innovation ideas is making a full-fledged program of it, complete with a character (in the case of Assurance, it's "Ivan Idea"!), a convenient intranet-based way to submit ideas, and a $5 gift card for EVERY business process improvement idea submitted. Among 200 Assurance employees, 60% have submitted ideas! Every idea is reviewed, followed-up, and published through the work of a key middle management group. (Steven Handmaker)

The right kind of internal competition can be a stimulus for sharing proven ideas others haven't yet implemented. With a distributed marketing force, Gallagher Benefit Services uses national webcasts to prompt individual offices to share what's working for them to improve efficiency, revenue growth, and operations. Marketing plays a role in drawing out best practices from participants. (Theresa Kwan-Zangara)

Death by a Thousand Approvals

Sometimes innovation hinges on avoiding corporate inertia and simply starting before getting everything cleared. Social media implementation can be an example of this in more traditional companies. Get the kindred spirits in place, agree to the program goals and risks you're willing to take on, and begin. With social media especially, there may be a better opportunity to start and experiment within an agreed to framework that minimizes the potential for big gaffes. (Brian Krause)

Thanks to everybody for making it such a great information-packed session. For even more ideas, check out this previous Brainzooming post on dealing with ten common NOs in business inNOvation. - Mike Brown

More from the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event

2009-11-11T04:50:00.004-06:00

Today's recap from the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event, highlights presentations from two CMOs - Eduardo Conrado at Motorola (Broadband Mobility Solutions) and Chris X. Moloney at Scottrade.

Eduardo spoke on "CEO Expectations: How Marketing Must Drive Growth in Today's Economy." Among his key points:

One downside of seeing yourself as a tech company is you lead with technology, not customer benefits. Comment - Every company is susceptible to this. When you're strong at a core capability delivering important benefits, make sure you don't get caught up in the capability and lose sight of potential changes in benefits your customers are seeking.
In positioning new products, Motorola attempts to start with the customer perspective, followed by the Motorola solution, and then adding the product detail. Comment - This isn't revolutionary, yet this solid formula should be kept top of mind when working through positioning, messaging, and customer communications.
Motorola attempts to find communities that have developed offline and create a place to host them online. And to add value, Motorola seeks to aggregate relevant content from multiple sources, including material from outside the company. Comment - Great reminder that a company's social media effort can benefit from going to where people are already being social and adding value vs. trying to lure them to a completely new place with unproven benefit.

Chris Moloney covered "Major Growth and Marketing Opportunities in the New Reset Economy," with metrics and search as important themes:

Chris challenged sellers to work from the buyer's metrics to be able to best serve them. Comment - Amid the challenges many marketers face in getting a handle on their own metrics, it can seem daunting to consider starting with consumer metrics. Yet this theme is right on target, and has been echoed by other CMOs I've seen in the past 18 months, most particularly Keith Pigues at PlyGem. You have to understand what success looks like from the customer's view, particularly in B2B markets, to deliver the best possible value.
Every marketer needs to understand search in some form, and it's a good area to get good at for the efficiency benefits in can create within your marketing mix. Comment - Search was a big theme throughout the day. Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing, did an informative presentation on free tools to better understand search traffic on your website. It's an area I'll be exploring more deeply given the predictability of search as a marketing tool.

Tomorrow, we'll recap the innovation roadblocks roundtable I facilitated at the conference, with some really cool ideas from the participants. - Mike Brown

The Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Event - Joe Batista

2009-11-10T04:50:00.004-06:00

I participated in the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 event November 2 in Chicago, leading a round table on getting around innovation roadblocks. The next several days will highlight some of the many intriguing ideas shared during the day from great marketing practitioners.

Yesterday's Creative Quickie mentioned the title "Chief Creatologist" which belongs to Joe Batista at HP, who spoke on "Creating New Market Revenues in a Down Economy." I met Joe at a 2007 Frost & Sullivan event, and his case study-driven presentations at both events were tremendously thought provoking considering HP targets $3 billion in new growth quarterly from the approaches Joe shared.

He looks for business growth through discovering and exploring new areas to respond to clients' needs. His efforts center on going beyond a closed innovation model and exploring the company's research in new ways and looking beyond its boundaries for new opportunities:

Joe highlighted techniques to help identify new growth sources, including thinking broadly about the available assets a company has, generalizing what the assets (especially technology) can do, and connecting organizationally-dispersed assets inside a company. Comment - These all tie to fundamental lateral thinking principles, stressing the real-life importance of being able to apply abstract thinking skills in identifying opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
Look for pockets of knowledge and expertise inside your business and explore how they can be converted into new revenue streams. Comment - A great way to do this is to identify what BENEFITS your knowledge can provide and then think through what other parties are seeking these or related benefits.
One more potential growth source? Growth arises from examining currencies you have available inside your company (i.e., what flows through your value system) and by making the boundaries of your company porous so ideas from outside can flow through it. Comment - Joe's remarks continually underscored the importance of being able to step away from detail and "get" the bigger, potentially underlying picture, whether it's inside or outside your company.

There's a lot behind these summarized comments. I look forward to trying to connect with Joe further and better understand the innovative approach he's bringing to business growth! - Mike Brown

BTW -This is the second anniversary of the blog's first post. No big deal in the posts this week, but it seemed like at least worth a mention. Look for the Brainzooming redesign and move to a Wordpress format in the very near future!

Creative Quickie - Recap Your Odds & Ends

2009-11-09T04:50:00.005-06:00

Spare a minute to recall what stood out for you last week, looking for creativity triggers in your recollections. If you're on Twitter, they make for great fodder to tweet as well.

Here are some things from last week on my creative quickie list:

Important relearning of the week? When introducing a new idea, deliberately put yourself in situations that require explaining it. It really helps refine messaging much more quickly.
Most interesting strategy question of the week? "In ten words, tell me what creates profit in your business?"

Most surprising street sign? This one below. Where, but in Kansas City, is there a 10 hour parking sign?

A good deed that's usually appreciated: Invite an introvert to go with you to a networking function. (Or to paraphrase @trmndsblndtte: Help de-flower an introvert!) If you're an introvert and someone asks you to an event, accept the invitation!

Greatest inspirational messages while walking down the street? These from the school at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.

Most innovative job title of someone I met? "Chief Creatologist"
Most reassuring development? Encouragement from so many great people. Now to figure out how to engineer it happening every week! - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Up, Up, and Away

2009-11-06T04:50:00.003-06:00

This is the first guest Brainzenning video submission. It comes from an email reader who captured this really cool video.

Starting Over, Part 2

2009-11-05T04:50:00.004-06:00

I'm a huge fan of NOT starting from scratch. If there's a remnant of a leftover idea, approach, or possibility sitting around, I always want to begin there and get that much of a head start toward a final goal by incorporating what I've done before.

Earlier this year, long-time friend Vince Koehler stopped by while in town. Vince shared his approach on collateral updates: he requires his staff to throw out all the copy on a brochure that's being redone and start over.

The reason? Doing so forces strategic thinking and a fresh creative view of the program that's being marketed. There's the potential for tremendous innovation value since this is another way of forcing a different look at a familiar topic.

If you've got a project that looks and feels like a re-do, why not give this approach a try? Toss out everything that's gone before, and it will feel just like starting over. - Mike Brown

Creative Quickie - Take Some Time

2009-11-04T04:50:00.001-06:00

Keith Prather and I attended the October 21, 2009 Central Exchange CEO Series luncheon featuring Beryl Raff, Chairman and CEO of Helzberg Diamonds.

It was an interesting talk, especially when she went off script, discussing challenges in her career, how she developed a specialty in turnarounds, and the first meeting with her new "boss," Warren Buffett.

The first audience question was about what type of atmosphere she feels fosters innovation. Her answer was one where the status quo is challenged all the time and people "talk about ideas."

There's your creative quickie: see how often you're challenging the status quo today (vs. settling for what's okay or routine) and notice amid the time pressures of business, if you're avoiding "talking" about ideas.

Don't rush to "just do something." Invest time in strategic thinking and challenge your world as it exists today. - Mike Brown

A Whole Brain Network of Great People

2009-11-03T04:50:00.002-06:00

I've extolled the benefits of surrounding yourself with both left brain and right brain people to complement what you lack in expertise and perspective. It's incredible to tap innovative people across the entire spectrum of points of view on strategic situations you're facing.

Last Friday at my going away party, another upside of a network of great diverse thinkers surfaced: it makes for a better party!

Shortly after the announced start time, someone remarked about the "surprising" number of attendees from finance and accounting backgrounds. Looking around, nearly the entire crowd would be considered naturally left brained thinkers (i.e., quantitative, precise, punctual).

A little while later, more of the right brain people (i.e., intuitive, holistic, random) began to arrive. By the time the event was well underway, it became a whole brain party, spawning interesting combinations of diverse people interacting with one another throughout the evening.

And since my creative instigation partner Jan Harness drove the party planning, there were 3 innovation exercises along with post-its and Sharpies for guests to ideate on what Brainzooming could become!

Because of the whole brain network of great people in attendance, we had a crowd early on, lively interactions and ideas throughout, enough people staying late to extend the party, and a final small group of both left and right brainers having a passionate (and by "passionate," I mean "interesting but slightly uncomfortable") conversation about my future prospects.

Truly, the type of whole brain night I love! - Mike Brown

What Are We Trying to Say?

2009-11-02T04:50:00.006-06:00

Many (okay, let's be real, nearly all) corporate visions, missions, values, BHAGs (you name it), sound alike. They either extol bland concepts (i.e., "our associates will be the best") or meaningless ideas (i.e., "our human intellectual capital will leverage world-class synergies").

If you have boring or confusing strategic statements in your business, here's an approach to correct it: ask the questions below to help simplify and enrich the language in your strategic statements:

How would customers describe what we're talking about in ways very meaningful to them?
If we were telling somebody who knows nothing about our business about why this idea is important to the company's success, what would we say?
How would we communicate this in a way that really inspires our employees to greatness? How about potential employees?
What are more emotional words to describe this statement?
How will we talk about it when we've accomplished this goal?
How would one of our mothers proudly tell a relative about what we're trying to do?
If we had to explain this to children, what would we say so they could understand it and be able to act?

Give these questions a try with your management team or on your own. Take the words and phrases you imagine and start turning strategic corporate speak into language that moves the hearts, minds, and actions of everyone in your company! - Mike Brown

2009-11-01T23:00:00.001-06:00

Maybe 2009 has been okay. Maybe it’s been a disaster.
No matter what challenges 2010 holds, you need a solid plan.
Armada Corporate Intelligence can help.

If you need to outmaneuver competitors and grow, Idea Generation Sessions jump start an innovative 2010.

If you are staying with the basics, but want stronger performance, a Plan Audit evaluates current efforts, makes needed updates and prioritizes your best moves for the coming year.

If you are looking for a whole new approach, Fast-Track Planning makes the most of your team’s expertise with out bogging you down in endless meetings and iterations.

2010. Some will bank on hope.
Others will contact Armada Corporate Intelligence

for help in getting a solid plan ready.
To find out more, email us at 2010Plan@ArmadaCI.com.

Chicago Happy Hour and Tweetup - Monday Evening, November 2, 2009

2009-10-31T10:30:00.001-05:00

If you're in Chicago on Monday, November 2, 2009, you're invited to a happy hour / tweetup for friends from this summer's Business Marketing Association conference and other great folks in the Chicago marketing and social media community.

It will be a casual opportunity to renew friendships and meet new people! Feel free to invite others as well!

Place: Frankie's Scaloppine & Pizzeria

Location:
900 N Michigan, 5th Floor (Directions Link)
Chicago, IL 60611
312-266-2500

Starting Time: 5:45 p.m., Monday, November 2, 2009

Twitter Hashtag: #bztweetup

If you have questions, email me at brainzooming@gmail.com

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Brainzenning Bonus - Anxiety Monster

2009-10-31T04:50:00.000-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

A Reflection

2009-10-30T04:50:00.005-05:00

We never know how long important personal and business relationships will endure. That necessitates using every daily opportunity to help those around you grow and to learn from them as well. A post last year when a friend was leaving our company included questions to see if you're really giving enough of yourself to important people in your life. The questions warrant repeating:

Can you see your positive influence on these people?
Have you helped prepare them to pass on to others the lessons you’ve shared?
Do these people know how much they mean to you?
If you had one extra day to spend with one of these important people, would you do the same things to help them you'd do any other day?
Are you ready to let them go so they can grow and develop even more?

If you answer yes to all of these, you've truly given of yourself in helping someone grow and develop.

Entering a new career phase, I want to thank all those people who should be answering "Yes" to these questions in light of what they've given to me. They know who they are, and if you look back through the first two years of posts on Brainzooming you will too!

And as suggested by Chris Reaburn, here's a time lapse Brainzenning video of the denuding of the orange in my office.

What's Next? I'll be in Chicago Monday, leading a roundtable on Business Innovation Roadblocks at the Frost & Sullivan Marketing World 2009 Conference. If you're in Chicago, watch this weekend for an announcement on a Brainzooming tweetup / happy hour get together for Monday (11/2) in Chicago. - Mike Brown

You Never Know

2009-10-29T04:50:00.004-05:00

Cleaning offices isn't a distinctive talent for me; it's a chore from beginning to end. Yet, as you learned this week, it's necessary right now.

Among my files was a notebook from a Statistical Process Control training class my first weeks on the job. Inside the notebook was a section on conducting brainstorming along with handwritten notes from the class.

I don't remember learning brainstorming in grad school, and we didn't have training at my first job, so this had to be my first formal exposure to brainstorming. There in the notes are the familiar admonitions I use all the time: listen intently to all participants, capture what they're saying in the words they use, encourage and reinforce all comments, don't judge prematurely. Everything's there for getting innovation started.

While the class (and some of the great people I met there) is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday, this specific topic isn't even a vague memory. Back then, it was something my boss was making me go to. In retrospect, it was life altering day.

The moral - you never know.

You never know which days will change your life. So never write off any day as a throw-away. Go into each one with a sense of wonder. Look for who you may meet or what you might learn that will fundamentally shape the rest of what you'll ever do. - Mike Brown

Personal Branding When You're 25x 2.0

2009-10-28T04:50:00.003-05:00

Thanks to a tweet from Richard Dedor, Chris Reaburn and I were last minute attendees at a Kansas City PRSA lunch session by Dan Schawbel based on his book Me 2.0 - Build a Personal Brand to Achieve Career Success.

The talk was part of a career day for students interested in PR, so the average audience age was 20. As a result, Dan's slant on personal branding was customized for the industry and audience life stage.

The concepts he covered were nonetheless applicable to anyone working on personal branding. From talking with many people in mid-career transitions, however, they tend to be woefully behind on how personal branding applies to their situations. So for the 25 times 2.0 crowd, here are three suggestions customized for you:

1. Volunteering for meaningful assignments with professional associations is a great mid-career internship.

Dan highlights the necessity of internships for college-age job seekers. Mid career job seekers have similar opportunities. I speak with many people whose current job is "looking for a job." There's no sizzle and not much built-in skill development there. Yet associations relevant to you are likely looking for knowledgeable professionals to take on assignments. One great thing about a smartly-chosen volunteer project is you typically have room to make it much cooler than anyone in the association ever expected. The result is you get to experiment, learn, and have something with sizzle to lead with when networking.

2. Mid-career, it's imperative to assess your personality and get on with changing what's not working.

My advice to people who leave for other companies is always to think about who they want to be in a new job, because it's the only opportunity to create a "new" you. Dan makes the point it's tremendously challenging to reinvent yourself in the age of (nearly) total visibility to your online presence. That's true, but if you continually trip yourself up through the same behaviors, do the self-help, career coaching, or counseling necessary to eliminate rough spots. Become if not a new, at least a "new formula" you.

3. Mid-career people need a solid offline and online network you're actively growing.

Dan's right when he says a larger network has the potential to work much harder for you. But with a number of years of experience, you should be good at determining the highest value people in your network. While you definitely want to serve and cultivate these relationships very actively, you should also be continually reaching out to expand your network offline and online. Focus on adding people you may be able to help while building the most vibrant, responsive network you can. That's a far better move than creating the largest network possible filled with people having few real ties to you.

This topic is of increasing interest, so look for more on it as we go forward. Let me know how we can deliver value to you as part of the Brainzooming family! - Mike Brown

When DIY Doesn't Work

2009-10-27T04:50:00.006-05:00

Steve Epley visited last week, and we talked about challenges in trying to do for yourself what you do professionally for others. This resonated because of recent work on the Brainzooming™ brand. It's much easier to figure out another's great brand value and how to communicate it than doing the same for myself. It's tough to step back and address your own situation as objectively as you can for someone else.

Are you facing similar challenges? Here are three alternatives:

1. Use what you know works.

Struggling to clarify the Brainzooming brand as a business entity and personally, it struck me that we use a variety of tools with others to help define brand promises and positions. Turning to tools I've seen work in so many situations helped push my own thinking and expand the concepts being considered. If you've got tools and approaches developed for those you serve, don't overlook applying them to your own business situation.

2. Ask for help.

I stared at my resume for years, unable to update it. In 2007, I finally sought professional preparation, with great results. Updating it now with all the new experiences and results of the past two years is again challenging. Based on a tip from Jan Harness, whip-smart wordsmith and media maven Emma Alvarez-Gibson is helping convey what Brainzooming represents in words. Never consider it a weakness to get help doing what you know how to do. Instead, it shows the respect for your profession you want others to also have.

3. Be Patient and Wait.

As much I love believing strategic thinking approaches completely get you around time and mental capacity crunches, they won't in every case. Many issues need to unfold in real time to allow strategic thinking and action. Each passing day, next steps for Brainzooming become clearer and more developed. As much as I'd have loved to figure out some things last year, it simply wasn't reasonable to do so. Maybe if you can't work too far ahead on a project, you can at least work on patience instead.

Hope those help in getting around any roadblocks you face employing a DIY approach in your own field. - Mike Brown

What's He Doing?

2009-10-25T04:50:00.001-05:00

Big shifts are taking place personally. They're sure to affect the direction and content on Brainzooming™, and it's appropriate to let you know what's happening.

For the past five years, I've been working a personal branding plan designed to grow my network, increase learning, and build a stronger presentation and writing repertoire. Important activities have included:

Speaking and facilitating with groups internationally on developing strategic thinking, innovation, branding, and social media

Starting multiple blogs, including one on humor and another on spirituality

Introducing Brainzooming as a "personal" brand

Employing a social media strategy to grow the brand

It's been an aggressive effort, and especially recently, I've described myself as doing two full-time jobs. The personal branding effort for Brainzooming takes place early mornings, late nights, weekends, and vacation days away from my primary job in a corporate role.

During my career, my day job has allowed incredible opportunities to grow and contribute beyond my original market research position:

Developing the strategic understanding and planning behind a dramatic corporate turnaround

Running an industry leading, award-winning, decade-long NASCAR sponsorship program

Producing a series of transformative customer meetings with some of the best speakers in the business

Creating culture changing internal and external branding efforts

Through it all, it's been amazing to work with incredibly talented and wonderful people. It's actually quite staggering to contemplate the incredible opportunities I've been provided.

This Friday though, after a difficult decision, I'm leaving my corporate position. Despite all the news suggesting it's a ridiculous time to do it, nearly all indications suggest it's exactly the right thing to do.

As a result, next Monday my priorities flip: Brainzooming moves to the forefront and pursuing a potential next corporate position becomes secondary.

While I've made a point to keep nearly all references to my corporate position out of Brainzooming, its daily learnings and challenges infuse the blog content all the time. With a different routine and new interactions, what gets covered here will change. Together, we'll find out exactly what that means as the future unfolds.

Welcome to the new phase of Brainzooming, as it grows into a full-time strategic innovation consulting company! The Brainzooming team looks forward to your ideas, business leads, and guidance as the changes take place!

P.S. Especially the business leads! More on that later! - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Whatcha Gonna Do?

2009-10-23T04:50:00.004-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Innovation Strategy? Yes, No, and Everything In Between - Guest Post by Mike Brown

2009-10-22T04:50:00.002-05:00

How can I be a guest blogger on my own blog you may ask? Well, this post was originally written for Braden Kelley's Blogging Innovation website. So it was a original guest post there in response to the question, "Does an organization have to have an innovation strategy?" Here's my take:

Does an organization need an innovation strategy? Let me say, unequivocally, "It depends."

Depending on its business situation, there are multiple strategic innovation approaches. Here are three different business situations and a potential innovation path for each:

Situation 1 - It's All About Innovation

If innovation is fundamental to an organization's success and competitiveness, then innovation "matters" for that business. And when innovation passes the "does it matter" test, beyond an innovation strategy, it becomes more important that innovation be woven into overall business strategy.

Situation 2 - Innovation Is Appreciated

For many (most?) companies, innovation is viewed as beneficial, but it doesn't matter in the same strategic sense as in the first group. If that's the case, having visible top-level support for innovation can take the place of an explicit innovation strategy.

Beyond that, it's vital to manage the environment's receptivity to innovation. This starts with assessing the degree to which critical success factors (CSFs) for innovation exist. If CSFs are largely in place, the primary task becomes integrating innovation into the company's strategic direction. If some or all aren't present, step one is making moves to put them in place to create a higher probability of innovation success. Among innovation CSFs are:

Having an innovation-friendly environment - Even absent an innovation strategy, are processes in place that are conducive to exploration and development of new ideas? Organizational forces should motive and support work across disciplines and recognize individual and group contributions to innovation.
A longer term sensibility - Some innovation starts yielding near-term returns. Often, it takes longer. There has to be some rope to play with (both in terms of time and resource investment) for a sustained innovation effort.
Fact-based strategic perspectives are encouraged - Is innovative, strategic thinking considered to be the purview of senior leadership or is it cultivated broadly? Multiple, perspectives are vital to triggering, thoroughly vetting, and successfully implementing new ideas. The closer to customers those strategic perspectives originate, the better, and that's usually not exclusively from senior managers.
A basic comfort level with disturbing the status quo - Moving into new areas is usually messy organizationally and in the marketplace. These disruptions need to be understood as innovation precursors. Is your organization ready to fail fast & learn quickly if it's a step to successful innovation?
A willingness to bring diverse parties into innovation - There's now more recognition and acceptance of the incredible potential in ideas coming from outside an organization. Does yours have an externally-oriented view that introduces broad inputs into innovation?
Metrics are used to motivate and refine innovation, not quash it - Innovation has to produce value for customers and the business to be worthwhile. Monitoring value requires solid metrics. Are they (or can they be put) in place to help steer innovation efforts and monitor their impacts without being used to prematurely shut-down exploration?

Situation 3 - Innovation Gets in the Way

When an organization's sentiment runs counter to innovation, underground innovation is an alternative. This implies working around the system to create and implement innovation efforts beneficial for the business. Going low-key can provide several advantages:

It potentially lowers expectations and increases maneuverability. With few resources, there’s potentially less scrutiny, leading to some freedom to experiment, make mistakes, learn, and still drive results.
Parties who participate are likely to be more committed. With a certain amount of risk in joining forces with an underground effort, people won't typically get in half-way.
It forces more ingenuity. Cut-off from some fundamental resources, you have to understand limitations upfront, spell out a plan for what you won’t have, and innovate in areas you wouldn’t have considered previously.
You can focus on creating deliverables instead of justifying each innovation step. With a near-term results oriented management team, being able to introduce them to an innovation that's nearer completion can be beneficial.
You can get an advantage relative to competitors. They may be taking a more traditional route to innovation or completely eliminating innovation programs while you're still trying to move ahead.

What Do You Do?

You know your business situation. Consider the range of possibilities and select the level of strategic innovation focus that makes sense for your business and the desired results. - Mike Brown

How Many Years Experience Do You Have?

2009-10-21T04:50:00.004-05:00

Several years ago, an HR professional passed along a piece of wisdom warranting consideration by anyone who works: Lots of people claim twenty years experience, when what they really have is one year of experience, twenty times over.

Since that conversation, I've used her statement to gauge my career:

What new skills, capabilities, and accomplishments have I demonstrated in the past year?

Based on near term potential, what opportunities exist to gain new experience in the coming year?

What can I do specifically this year to increase the likelihood I'll be developing additional valuable skills?

Ask yourself those same questions. If it looks like you've posted several years of the same experience, you owe it to yourself to take deliberate steps and correct the situation. Potential solutions?

Work to redesign your job - formally or informally

Step forward for new and different work assignments

Figure out ways you'll increase your learning

Volunteer for associations and specific roles to help grow your experience

If you haven't done this self-assessment, do it now and get to work making sure your next twelve months are materially new and different. - Mike Brown

Make Mistakes Week

2009-10-20T04:50:00.004-05:00

Amid dramatic changes in my professional life, and Brainzooming™ in particular, I'm deliberately forcing myself into uncomfortable areas necessitating rapid development of previously underused skills.

Understanding the importance of diving in and not holding myself to an unrealistic performance standard, I labeled last week, "Make Mistakes Week."

When undertaking changes and growth, do yourself a favor and establish a "Make Mistakes Week" for yourself. Doing so acknowledges the need to get started, consciously practice, learn from experience, and continuously improve.

In addition to trial and error, I tried listening and observing others more intently as they offered absolutely fundamental counsel. It's always amazing how clearly others can see things you should find obvious yet completely miss!

Through the concurrent development and implementation of new messaging for Brainzooming, I did get better at delivering it during the week. But the improvement wasn't all in a straight line, and it fell well short of where it needs to be.

As a result, this week is "Make Mistakes Week - The Sequel!" - Mike Brown

Creative Quickie - Flip Out

2009-10-19T04:50:00.007-05:00

There are so many situations in everyday life that can be sources of current and future creative inspiration.

How do you become better at actually capitalizing on their inspirational value?

One way is to get an easy-to-use video camera and start capturing these situations.

Having a Flip camera with me nearly all the time this year has not only allowed capturing blatantly creative images, but has also refined my eye for spotting hidden creativity in more mundane situations.

Figure out which type of device works best for you - it could be a Flip, a Kodak (that's for former BMA board president Jeff Hayzlett!), or your PDA. Find the device that allows you to video at a moment's notice and build an inspiration reserve for when you hit a creative block. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Goodbye to the Land of Giant Paper Airplanes

2009-10-16T04:50:00.005-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Borrowing Brilliance - A Guest Post of Sorts

2009-10-15T04:50:00.003-05:00

I attended the KC Small Business "Think Bigger" luncheon recently when guest speaker David Kord Murray discussed his new book, "Borrowing Brilliance." The tome covers 6 steps (defining, borrowing, combining, incubating, judging, and enhancing) to build from others' ideas.

While several people afterward expressed frustration with Murray's presentation and demeanor (some of the frustrations were very justified), he shared a number of valuable points. Here's my take on the highlights he covered (thus the designation of this piece as a guest post of sorts):

To get to a core issue, Murray suggests asking, "What's the problem above the problem we're considering?" This is a different and helpful way of expressing the question, "What are we trying to achieve?" He cited an old, but relevant, example. In the 1920's, Ford defined the issue as building the cheapest car. GM identified a more fundamental issue: making cars affordable. Its problem definition led to auto financing's introduction.
Murray expressed a clear disdain for unfettered brainstorming, claiming stronger ideas emerge when more judging is involved. He has a point, in that once you've moved from divergent to convergent thinking steps, solid evaluation approaches do push you closer to more readily implementable ideas.
In using different perspectives to look for analogous ideas, Murray shared a borrowing continuum to look for ideas in Same, Similar, and then Distant domains (i.e., your industry, a related industry, a radically different industry). This concept has been discussed frequently in Brainzooming (and the "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" ebook is structured similarly), yet this was a new, actionable way of expressing the approach.

He talked about "aha moments" occurring in the shower so frequently because we've typically minimized conscious thought, allowing the sub-conscious to sift through raw materials it's been fed. I haven't tried scheduling a group creative team meeting in the shower yet, but it again emphasizes the value of changes of scenery and activity in ideation.

Murray passed along an interesting factoid: Walt Disney conceived Disneyland not as an amusement park, but as a movie starring the park's guests. Instead of "rides," mini-movies were then developed in which guests star for a few minutes. I'd never really thought about it, but it makes perfect sense. It's also a great example of selecting a rich core concept and using it throughout the innovation process to create strategically consistent implementation.

All these are helpful insights. Now here's one for new authors (i.e., David Kord Murray): when a well-known local bookstore (i.e., Rainy Day Books) helps co-sponsor your appearance, maybe your closing book slide should feature its logo along with (or even instead of) the major online bookseller brands you chose to feature. Just saying. - Mike Brown

Creating Memorable Experiences

2009-10-14T04:50:00.004-05:00

We wrapped up the AMA Marketing Research Conference last week to ver y kind words from a number of participants about the different nature of the conference experience.

The secret of great, meaningful brand events lies in a simple formula. Look for the strongest possible alignment on these 3 dimensions:

Attendees' personal interests
An event's emotional intensity
A brand's visibility as the event's enabler

The formula works across many venues and event types. Recognize the enabling brand can be for business (i.e., an event sponsor), or it may be a personal brand (you and your spouse throwing a holiday party).

No matter what the event, consider and deliver on these three variables to see a difference in your audience's experience and reactions. - Mike Brown

Taking Note in a New Way

2009-10-13T04:50:00.005-05:00

Want to meet cool new people? Next time you're at a public presentation, "live tweet" it. Live tweeting implies using Twitter to report:

What the speaker is communicating
Offering your own commentary
Retweeting what others are tweeting about it

I live tweeted the Integrated Marketing Summit last week in Kansas City to further experiment with the process. Based on my tweets from a direct database marketing session, Doug Haslam switched breakouts and joined the session. This created the opportunity to chat, and after attending his session on PR and social media, later talk at the networking reception.

I wouldn't have necessarily gone up and talked with someone new (ah, the curse of an introvert), but live tweeting opened the door to connect and meet a new, really smart person at the forefront of social media.

Beyond the in-person opportunity, live tweeting often opens the opportunity to attract and follow new people in your Twitter network as well.

Live tweeting - a whole new way for introverts to become social animals. - Mike Brown

Write Shorter

2009-10-12T04:50:00.004-05:00

A very nice blog reader stopped me at the Integrated Marketing Summit to say she reads Brainzooming every day, "when it's short."

Great reminder to me and to you.

When writing, set a deliberately low limit on the total number of words you'll ultimately allow yourself. Challenge every word. While you're at it, eliminate "that" from your writing. The blog's rough drafts have taught me "that" is my most frequently used unnecessary word. Based on other material I read, it's likely one of yours too.

A reader once told me I get one minute of his time each day, which is a "big deal." His statement is on my mind every time I write a post. I appreciate and respect the time you spend with Brainzooming and want to make sure it's of value. So I'll try and keep it short. - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Self-Portrait

2009-10-09T04:50:00.004-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Musings on Creativity + Innovation in Business - Guest Post by Meghan M. Biro

2009-10-08T04:50:00.002-05:00

Today's guest blogger, Meghan Biro, Founder of TalentCulture, calls me the most patient person on Twitter. One day earlier in 2009 when back home with my parents, I saw Meghan tweeting with someone in my network, checked out her intriguing profile, and had a short Twitter conversation with her. Not sure if it was then or later, but I asked (maybe begged) her to do a guest post for Brainzooming.

She said she would, and I began my patient waiting. I'd reach out about once a month to see if she was still considering it, and each time she said she was. That was good enough for me!

In the meantime, we've talked by phone, paving the way for another great business relationship initiated on Twitter. So without further delay, here's Meghan's take on creativity + innovation in business (it's well worth the wait!):

We are a generation raised to believe we are creative. Some of us actually are lucky enough to be employed as creatives; the rest of us, who received colored markers and sketchbooks in kindergarten, must look for ways to draw out the sparks of creativity we secretly nurture while working as accountants, engineers, administrators or in other career paths not known for rewarding creativity.

The dirty little secret many people live with is that creativity is not usually rewarded in the workaday world. So how can we nurture creativity in our work? What are the warning signs that someone we work with is trying to sabotage our creativity, and what can we do to counter resistance?

First, let’s look at some quick creativity-boosters.

Take time for someone else. The conventional wisdom is to take time for yourself, but turn that around, reach out of yourself and set aside 15 minutes a day to think about someone else, and how they are creative. Contemplate the different point of view this person presents; talk to them and ask questions about what they like, not what they do.
Try something really new. Listen to music you think you don’t like. Commit to buying a CD or checking out live music– don’t just download a song - and listen to the whole thing. Sample new sounds and accept the challenge of something you wouldn’t normally choose.
Ask a question. Then commit to listening to the answer and allowing what the other person says to influence your thoughts. Too often we have the answer we want to hear formulated before we ask a question.
Learn something new every day. Commit to learning – and using – a new word every day. Or read history instead of a novel. Teach yourself to dance. Try something new and expand your perceptions, physical coordination and mental agility.

All of these things can be done easily, and all can make you a more creative person.

But what if you work with someone who seems to suck the creativity out of every situation? You know the signs: this person interrupts others or pushes away from a conference table with crossed arms when they hear something they don't agree with. This person can kill creativity by walking into a room – if you let it happen.

Here are a few ways to work with that person creatively and collaboratively:

Look outside your context. Your experience of a person may be that he or she is not creative. Try to look at that person from his or her context – manager, colleague or employee – and open yourself to his or her experience of your comments.
Use active listening. Listen to the person speak, restate what they said as a query, and add a comment of your own that brings in a new idea. Open up a closed mind by reassuring the person that you heard them - before you add your comments or ideas.
Engage the person by taking the time to learn what he likes, and acknowledging that bit of humanity. Maybe this person reads a lot, or has a beloved dog, or loves to ski. These are cues to that person’s creativity, and acknowledging them gives you an emotional bargaining chip in your next attempt to infuse the workplace with creativity.
Work incrementally. Someone who is uncomfortable with creative ideas may respond better to small changes than big, bold ideas. Keep your creative goal in mind but break it down into components and advance your position slowly. It’s worth the effort to see creativity bloom.

Dare to take every action with a spark of creativity and you’ll feed your soul and lift the mood of your workplace. What are your creativity-builders? - Meghan M. Biro

Research Review Week - Keep Going!

2009-10-07T04:50:00.001-05:00

Too many research reports are train wrecks of charts, arrows, and statements that simply play back the graphics, or even worse, regurgitate the detailed methodology with no forward looking implications.

For senior executives, it means a confusing (and at best, boring) jumble of information – pointing in all kinds of directions without really saying anything.

If you have research responsibility, apply this maxim for great strategic thinking from Gary Singer, a wonderful strategist and former Chief Strategy Officer at Interbrand. His comment to me was:

Good researchers go to the edge of the data and step back – to be cautious & statistically sound.
Good consultants go to the edge of the data and stop – to be sure they’re on solid footing & that the client will buy off.
Great strategic thinkers go to the edge of the data, formulate a sound next set of assumptions that the audience can comment on & agree to, and then keep going to expand understanding & get to revealing insights.

It’s a simple statement and hard to do, but done successfully, it promises incredible business results. Use it as your new strategic hurdle to clear! - Mike Brown

Remember to check out the American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference website for updated tweets, videos, and articles from the conference. You can also track the conference at #amamrc on Twitter.

Research Review Week - Design Driven Deliverables

2009-10-06T04:50:00.001-05:00

W5, a market research company based in Durham, NC is a strong proponent of “design driven deliverables,” defined as “any method of communicating research findings that goes beyond the standard research report.”

In a time when it seems like attention spans continue to decline, it's fundamental to be able to form research results into meaningful stories that carry an impact with your audience. Very often, if you're willing to push your thinking and spend some time on a deliverable, the right communication vehicle is anything but a standard research report.

W5 considers four types of design driven deliverables:

Graphic – Results depicted visually in posters, booklets, stickers, note cards, etc.
Sensory – Stimuli that engage the senses in various ways, including textures, audio, video, and smells.
Experiential – An interactive presentation of results in ideation sessions, dramatization, experiential tours, immersion rooms.
Installation – Physical environments that convey understanding, including displays, large scale murals, shadow boxes, and artifact installations.

You can check out more information through W5 white papers on this and other topics at company’s website. - Mike Brown

Remember to check out the American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference website for updated tweets, videos, and articles from the conference. You can also track the conference at #amamrc on Twitter.

Research Review Week - Forging Strong Relationships

2009-10-05T04:50:00.002-05:00

I'm tweeting and blogging the American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference early this week. You can visit the conference website to see live tweeting, video interviews, and blog posts as the conference progresses. Back here at Brainzooming, we'll be running some earlier posts on market research to complement the new material coming from the conference:

It's vital to have strong, successful relationships with key market research partners. This “Ten Things” list is a helpful starting off point for forging a solid relationship. Feel free to use or adapt it with your marketing partners:

Ten Things - The Foundation to a Strategic Research Relationship

Be a “thought partner” with us. This is a two-way street – we’ve got to treat you like one before you can do what it takes to become one.
Your energy and passion for what you do (and your intellectual curiosity) need to be evident.
There’s a difference between researchers who think they’re researchers and researchers who see themselves as business people. It’s tough to explain the differences, but they’re readily apparent. We need researchers who think like business people if we are to be successful.
Understand our business more deeply than from just the numbers that you see. If not, we’ll never get to where we must go.
Bring creativity to questioning, analysis, and reporting (and any place else in the process). That means generating new ideas to produce breakthroughs on mutual efficiencies, high impact insights, easy to grasp reporting, and actionable recommendations.
We must put information into context. We can’t afford to just report numbers or even changes in numbers. We need to get to insights. What does it mean? What do we do about it?
We have to get beyond reports that show charts and have bullets that merely say what is on the chart. We have to offer our audiences relevant insights. That takes pulling information from various sources (including people) and analyzing, talking, and identifying relationships among everything we’re looking at.
Look outside our industry or outside research circles for ways to report information. Review Edward Tufte, Richard Saul Wurman, and others. Are there movie scenes that help us get our points across? Magazine ads? Always ask the question: “What’s that like?”
Communicate proactively - let’s make sure we talk and we’re all clear on things before moving ahead. That may mean a phone call instead of an email.
Exhibit strong attention to detail – that way we can get beyond fact & spell checking and spend our time on delivering insights.

If you can get to this point with your research partners, you’ll truly be doing COOL WORK that matters and that can change your company and your industry. WOW!!!

Marketing Research RIP 2029: Why marketing research will not exist by 2029 (or by 2019 for that matter) - Guest Post by Ted Morris

2009-10-04T04:50:00.000-05:00

Note: A mid-September tweet from #Researchlive asked for short posts about what the market research industry will look like in 2029. A retweet by @amamrc prompted Ted Morris to comment that by 2029, market research will be a dead industry. Amid a conference theme challenging us all to imagine "What's Next," we reached out to Ted to expand on his challenging idea. Here are his perspectives on the developments paving the way for the market research industry, as we know it, to die away:

These are times of transformation for an industry reputed to see the world through a rear-view mirror rather than drive marketing innovation. This current recession / depression is a good time to us to rethink, retool, and re-launch.

So here are a few things to think about when going to your next client meeting:

Mobile and the Generation ‘Effect’: Verizon just announced it's getting out of the land line business by 2012. Telecom industry analysts have suggested that the general public will have completely disconnected from land lines by 2020. Most consumers aged 16-29 currently do not have a landline subscription and are one of the most difficult target markets to contact for survey research. If you think your teenage son or daughter are hard to reach because of their preoccupation with mobile devices and the Internet, just imagine how mobile the world will be in 20 years. Focus groups won’t be taking place in stuffy rooms with one-way mirrors, fancy sandwiches, and droning moderators.

Community Building: While some say “the consumer now controls the brand”, brands have commissioned companies such as Communispace to establish brand communities – online aggregations of consumers who have a specific loyalty, interest and adherence to a brand. Communispace has built over 300 online brand communities for clients such as HP, Kraft, Reebok, Starwood, and GSK. Brands use communities for direct feedback on product experience, innovation, service ideas, and value augmentation, allocating dollars that would normally go to marketing research budgets.

Social Media Monitoring Platforms: Five years ago the marketing research industry scoffed at such listening platforms. I can say that from first hand experience having held a corporate development role for a technology startup that was looking to the MR industry for capital. The biggest objection I heard was that social media monitoring "wasn’t market research." While I never suggested it was, social media monitoring is a way to passively listen and quantify brand conversations consumers choose to undertake online. This would have been like saying that digital advertising wasn’t true advertising since it did not use traditional creative, media and pricing models.

Aptly, Digitas recently referred to the Internet as ‘one large focus group”. Indeed.
Some early adopters, notably TNS/Kantar, Nielsen and J.D. Power & Associates took the early lead in making acquisitions. In turn they gained competitive advantage in meeting emerging client requirements: provide a capability to monitor and understand the nature of online consumer content, coined as WOM – Word of Mouth. WOM was coined by WOMMA, Word Of Mouth Marketing Association. WOMMA was founded by Andy Sernovitz, one of the nation’s most influential marketing and social media observers. Public Relations agencies, consultancies and OEM’s are also partnering with companies like Radian6 and Sysomos in order to have their own capability to monitor brands and emerging consumer trends.

Big Brands/ Big Digital Branding: Pepsi, Ford, Dell, NCR, General Mills are going digital, or at least migrating in that direction, when it comes to online consumer engagement. Ford for example, invests heavily in social media to manage, monitor, measure and position Ford as the most “social” automotive manufacturer. Pepsi is using various social media platforms to engage consumers, while Dell and Marriott are generating revenues from social media platforms. All are using social media to ‘sense and respond’ to customer requirements at times bypassing traditional marketing research as the need for "real time/on demand" consumer feedback grows.

Advertising Agency networks: WPP, for example, now has a portfolio that is roughly 50% digital. The WPP network is in the process of consolidating the back offices of its four major traditional ad agencies that are, one, unnamed WPP executive was known to have said “dying profitably”. As more advertising dollars go digital so are dollars allocated to traditional marketing research: the Social Media listening industry has been pegged at $150M according for Forrester. That’s up from $0 in 2003. Publicis, MDC, Ominicom, Havas have all stocked up on digital companies the past 3 years.

Marketing Research: By contrast the market research industry has been consolidating for 10 years to the point where the top 10 global MR firms own about a 40% share of revenues. In the past 3 years, revenues have barely kept up with inflation and have actually declined in 2008 along with the drop in ad spend. In fact, according to the 2008 Honomichl 50 report, with the exception of 2004, the US MR industry has not kept up with the rate of inflation since 2001 – the dawn of social media.

Our current economic recession has also seen some client companies completely eliminate their entire global MR spend – and you know who they are. There are exceptions: Comscore has grown 400% in the past 5 years according to Inside Research. Comscore focuses on measuring in the digital world. Makes sense as digital ad spend will rise by 9% next year, according to GroupM and mobile will rise by 19%.

By contrast, traditional ad spending is seeing drops of 23- 35% in the US, depending on the industry sector – not good for the MR industry. Moreover, WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell sees digital has having a 20% share of marketing budgets by 2014.

Haven’t heard the same about marketing research? Is that food for thought or a call to action for the industry? You decide. As Yogi Berra aptly put it, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it”. The clock is ticking. - Ted Morris ©4SceenMedia

Brainzenning - Coco, the Black Cat for October

2009-10-02T04:50:00.003-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

The Best Laid Plans Result from Creative Thinking - Guest Post by Sage Bray

2009-10-01T04:50:00.004-05:00

I first connected with Sage Bray when she was nice enough to do a tweet pointing her Twitter followers to Brainzooming as a great blog for creative inspiration. Her Twitter name (@aSageInRealLife) and profile were both tremendously intriguing. Sage is involved in a very cool blend of freelance writing, art, and consulting with small businesses and solopreneurs. Her published work has appeared with Inc. Magazine, The Poor Chef, Examiner.com, and a myriad of other online periodicals. She blogs about making a living from creative endeavors on aSageInRealLife.com.

In today's guest blog, Sage shares her perspectives on the benefits of placing creative thinking at the heart of planning:

Creativity isn’t really about random inspiration although it does seem that way sometimes. What it is really about is exploring options. Instead of falling into the “It’s done that way because that’s always how it’s been done” mode of thinking, you step outside the box, break new ground, push the limits, or get radical. Those are acts of true creativity - an essential, but often overlooked, component for a growing, vibrant business.

Even if you ask for innovative thinking from your employees or yourself, it can still be a fairly rare occurrence. That’s because it’s too easy to jump at the first viable idea that comes along. I have a rule: I must come up with an absolute minimum of three solutions to any business problem—although I try for at least 10. This means lots of wacky, crazy ideas which are fun and do result in some really interesting ideas. But it’s having choices that forces me to compare the pros and cons and really analyze what is possible.

For instance, if you want to get the word out about, say, your new casino style gaming site, you may think it’s innovative to start a campaign on Facebook, get fans, and start networking on gaming forums. And you could, and probably should. But what else could you do? There is traditional print advertising, which is becoming the rare thing to do these days. Under certain circumstances though, that could be the best choice to direct your funds, especially if you have a very targeted market. How about getting someone to dress up as Elvis and pass out coupons for free trials at local festivals? Or offer free life-long subscriptions to a couple big entertainment bloggers? Are these viable solutions for your marketing? You may laugh at the idea of some guy dressed up as Elvis promoting your business, but I know several businesses that do exactly that and they have seen significant measurable increases from this kind of promotion. No solution is too crazy - not if it works.

However, being creative and innovative does not mean just doing it differently. It means doing it well, in the best way possible, using the ingenuity you draw from others and from your experiences. Keep up your reservoir of ideas by reading plenty of blogs and newsletters, attending trade shows and local meet-up groups, and brainstorming with colleagues.

Don’t limit your exposure to things related to your specific industry either. You can glean fantastic ideas from both related and unrelated industries by simply asking yourself how their innovative ideas can relate to what you do.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel (although that sometimes happens) to keep your business growing and flexible. But you do have to be prepared to do things differently and look for creative solutions to even the most common problems. Keep in mind, the objective is to do whatever you do well. Sometimes the answer you need will be something completely ordinary and what you’ve been doing all along. The thing is, you won’t know if it’s the best solution without thinking creatively about it. - Sage Bray

Strategic Thinking Snippets - Implementation

2009-09-30T04:50:00.002-05:00

Here are a few strategic thinking snippets on implementation. Yes, thinking does need to turn into actions and results:

On things that don't really matter, it's okay to conserve your effort & take the easy way out.
On something that DOES matter, do it when you're ready to do it well. Don't just fit it in when you'll do it half-way (or worse).
When others are timid and worried about what the right next step is, decide to BE BOLD!
Attitude Check Question: Are you looking for and sharing good news with those around you? Please start....now!
Embrace the power of symbolism in communication. Not everything has to be literal.
Don't ever let an opportunity slip away through failing to go back & ask for it one more time.
Keep ideas with great potential around even if you don't use them now. They may be ideally suited for a future situation. - Mike Brown

A Brainzooming Creativity Manifesto

2009-09-29T04:50:00.001-05:00

Getting Ready for This!

2009-09-28T04:50:00.005-05:00

Today includes a lunch presentation at the Fort Hays State University Business and Leadership Symposium. The presentation title is "Getting Ready for This," and it focuses on six vital success competencies for graduates coming into the workplace amid a dramatically changing business world.

The premise is that it's fundamental for new graduates to own skills in co-creating, contorting, and abandoning ideas and strategies based on what's relevant at any time. It's not so much "what" they know, as "how" to continually deconstruct and reassemble their knowledge in dramatically new and relevant ways throughout their careers.

It starts with several amazing factoids from the video "Do You Know 3.0?" recounting dramatic demographic, technology, and information-based changes worldwide. It's been viewed millions of times, and in the event you haven't seen it, take a few minutes to watch it.

As a brief overview and reference for the presentation, here are the six areas for educators and students to more concertedly embrace:

1. Knowing Answers Is Good - Knowing How to Find Answers Is Vital

Since facts change and information deteriorates, it's vital to be able to know how to seek and vet potential answers since no one can be expected to have a full command of all available knowledge.

2. Balanced Thinking Allows You to Be More Strategic

USA Today featured an article in July on retraining a left brained orientation to a right brained one in order to cope with a changing job environment. We talk plenty about the importance of knowing your thinking orientation, surrounding yourself with a complementary team, and the strategic impact of being able to work with contradictory points of view.

3. Possibilities and Emotion are Important in Business

From someone whose more natural orientation centers on facts and logic, this has been the most challenging of the 6 areas to retrain my own view. The best place to go on this topic is Benjamin Zander, who has been mentioned frequently here. As a homework assignment for attendees at the FHSU presentation, I asked them to watch these two Zander videos and get a genuine sense of the importance of emotion and possibilities thinking:

Benjamin Zander on the Art of Possibilities

Benjamin Zander on Emotion and Possibilities

4. You Have to Be Able to Communicate in Multiple Ways

Communication is in the top 10 topics addressed on Brainzooming so far because it's so critical to successful creativity, innovation, and strategic thinking. Students need to be pushed to go beyond the typical team presentation that summarizes a semester-long project. They need to be adept at using formats of varying lengths (simple recommendations, elevator speeches, tweets, etc.) and mediums (songs, video, acting, etc.).

5. Leadership Starts Day One on the Job

Leadership is about service, not titles. That means day one is the time for new graduates to start leading on the job. Taking on a strategic leadership role can be simple. You just have to be willing to do something about it!

6. People All Around You Are Making Decisions Based on Personal Branding

Personal branding isn't a meaningless concept authors dreamed up to sell more books. It's truly the driver behind why anyone gets hired, advances, and has intriguing opportunities develop. Step one is understanding your talents and exploiting them. Here are two great books to read on how to further develop and sustain a personal brand:

"Radical Careering" by Sally Hogshead

"Orbiting the Giant Hairball" by Gordon MacKenzie

I look forward to comments from those in attendance (and non-attendees as well) with thoughts on the topic since it applies to all of us as dizzying changes occur around us. Stay close to the Brainzooming blog for more on change and dealing with it in the near future! - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Not Feeling Gravity's Pull

2009-09-25T04:50:00.002-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Storytelling to Frame Research Reports - Guest Post by Sean Buvala

2009-09-24T04:50:00.006-05:00

I'm chairing the American Marketing Association Marketing Research Conference October 4 - 7. It's going to be a great event, with three educational tracks all tied back to theme, "Making Business Sense of What's Next."

Our main programming objective for the conference is providing ideas, tools, and networking to help researchers approach business more broadly and with a clear means to help lead their companies successfully into the future. Through the conference social media effort, you'll be able to track the conference's progress using the hashtag #amamrc on Twitter and on the conference website, where I'll be blogging along with others next week.

To give you an early sense of the conference tone and content, today's guest Brainzooming columnist is presenting a workshop this Sunday at the conference's start. Sean Buvala is an award-winning trainer who teaches businesses and nonprofit organizations how to improve their business results through the power of storytelling. You learn more about his work at www.seantells.net.

In this piece, Sean challenges researchers (and really anyone communicating in business) to better incorporate framing to fully realize the impact of great storytelling.

The more esoteric your work, the more you need storytelling in your job. Those of you in research, I am talking to you.

Sometimes it is hard for others to understand the ins, outs, and mysteries of research. By using the power of storytelling in your communications, you can create "frames" to highlight, carry, and explain bigger concepts.

Every house I have ever been in has place filled with pictures of family and friends. Rather than just glue these pictures to the wall, the pictures are placed in frames that help draw the eye to the subjects within. In the most artistic homes, frames surrounding pictures have been carefully chosen to emphasize the content of the pictures. More important pictures (the "everybody in the family" type) have the most expensive and sturdy frames. Done well, frames are an extension of the pictures.

Just like picture frames in someone's home, framing complicated and important data in the context of a memorable story protects and carries your message to your listeners. Here's an example.

You could talk about the collection methods used to complete a survey and how that proves the validity of the data. However, folks want results first. So, instead of talking first about how the data means you must completely drop an ingrained and "sacred cow" program from your company, you could start with the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk," (JATBS) emphasizing how Jack's mother was furious with Jack for trading her sacred cow for a few magic beans. In the end, however, Jack ends up with a goose that lays golden eggs, giving Jack and his mother more than they ever dreamt.

You'll still present your data, but after you tell your version of JATBS, showing the data that correlates to your conclusion. Then, you might lead a discussion based on the data asking, "Just like the mother in JATBS, what do we fear in what the data tells us? In what ways is this data like magic beans for our company's future?" Finally, end your presentation with a recap of JATBS.

Now, you have framed your data (which is important and needed) in the center of a very familiar and comfortable story. I can assure you the first time you do this you will wade through some discomfort and come out with a presentation that will cement the conclusions into the minds of your listeners.

Here are three things you should know about story and narrative as framing tools:

1. People just want to know, "What's in it for me?"

Co-workers aren't as interested in you job's mechanics as you are. I know you have gone to school to learn how statistics work. However, the people you work with haven't. For most of them, how you collected the data is not nearly as important as what the data means for their work. Storytelling lets you talk about benefits of research, not just mechanics.

2. Stories remind you to speak in the language of the people: your fellow employees.

Although stereotypes of overly detailed researchers may seem unfair, there are those in your company still slightly afraid of you. When they know you will speak understandably, they are more open to hear what you have to say. When you share the story of how others have benefited by what you are proposing, they will feel better about providing tools and time to fulfill your projects. It's far better to talk to others about how Susan at the other office was twice as successful after incorporating research results you reported. In a sense, storytelling allows others to know you are "on their side."

3. Your CFO approves funds for results not information.

Most people hate the process of change. Results are better than promises. Stories are frames that carry results. You will get much more support for a project when folks know how others have benefited from your proposals. How the office across the city became so successful that they now have doubled sales is 100% more effective in getting results than any presentation mired in how the research was conducted.

Your work in research and statistics is vital. Even more vital is your ability to communicate the benefits of your work to the rest of your company. Information framed in the context of story, information carried by understandable narratives, will stick with your fellow staff members much longer than data alone. Take a chance and frame your next presentation in a story. - Sean Buvala

Spicing Up a Long-Term Relationship

2009-09-23T04:50:00.006-05:00

We're all likely involved in relationships tied to coaching, mentoring, or just plain supporting one another. They're tremendously helpful in personal and business growth, yet at times, these relationships can become stale.

What can you do if you find yourself in such a relationship? Here are a few options to spice things up:

Add a Person: I've been working out for more than three years with the same trainer. The results have been great, yet at times, we tend to fall into the same routines. When my niece was visiting last month, she went along as a guest trainee. The spirit of competition improved my effort and also created some new enthusiasm from my trainer.
Reverse Roles: I've got a great career coach who can amazingly have one meeting with me that creates about nine month's worth of activity and progress. Recently we got together for lunch and turned the tables: I was able to provide some coaching for her on new possibilities she's considering. It was of benefit to her, and it was really exciting for me to give something back to someone who has done so much to help me!

Schedule a Reunion: Early in my career, a group of us working as analysts for a challenging boss formed a tremendous bond as we tried to survive and figure out what we'd do with our careers. We don't get together often anymore, but we met for a happy hour recently to renew our friendship and share perspectives on what each of us is doing now.

Take a break: If you find a once thriving coaching relationship has stalled, consider seeing other people. The break could be temporary or permanent, but may be just the thing to open up time to find other relationships that work better for both of you right now.

Give one or more of these a try so you can keep moving forward with renewed enthusiasm! - Mike Brown

What Did We Learn?

2009-09-22T04:50:00.003-05:00

Craig Ferguson ends his Late Late Show program nightly with a brief segment called, "What did we learn on the show tonight Craig?"

For him, it's a regular comedy bit and a time cushion for the program's close where he reflects on specific moments from the show.

For us, it's a valuable question to ask and answer at any inflection point in a project that's in progress. It's a way to force stepping back and looking for broader, more general lessons to add to your personal or business survival toolkit (and potentially share with others).

Consider variations of the question as well. I try to ask myself at the end of each day, "What experiences from today could turn into Brainzooming blog items?" The discipline of asking the question and jotting down (or even tweeting) a few answers helps keep Brainzooming running each weekday.

BTW - If you're on Twitter, there's an effort today to move Craig Ferguson into the top trending topics list. To help, post a tweet that includes this hashtag: #CraigFerguson. For more info, you can check out a video on the effort and help the cause out!

5 Get Ahead Ideas

2009-09-21T04:50:00.002-05:00

Be friendly to people who may not seem to "count." Chances are they do count, and you simply don't realize it yet.

Ask questions, or at least listen more than you talk. You'll appear smarter, in part, because of all the things you'll learn.

Say "please" and "thank you" very often. You'll seem nicer than you probably are.

Be "quick" to apologize. That means both doing it sooner than later and getting it over with fast. Don't dwell on the mistake.

Actually do and repeat the four previous ideas!!! - Mike Brown

Brainzenning - Rubber Duckies

2009-09-18T04:50:00.005-05:00

Brainzenning - A video moment of calm and reflection.

Strategic Optimism: Tips for Staying Positive in Any Circumstance - Guest Post by Elissa Shuck

2009-09-17T04:50:00.004-05:00

Today's guest post was contributed by Elissa Shuck, another cool innovation, creativity, and improvement connection met through Twitter. Based in the Phoenix metro area, Elissa is CEO and President of ES-STRATEGIC, LLC. With more than 2 decades of multi-dimensional leadership experience, Elissa has made a lifelong commitment to innovation, creativity, and improvement while striving to help other experience personal and organizational excellence.

In her guest Brainzooming post, Elissa makes the case for the daily decision to be optimistic!

Life happens; it can be good, bad or ugly and even the most positive outlook has a lifespan.

We get beat up on the job, in traffic and in relationships – all of which can drain even the most committed of optimists of every ounce of water in that “half full glass." In order to stay positive amid the simplest or most challenging of circumstances, we must consciously and constantly feed our optimistic propensity for it to serve us in times of trouble. A Native American parable calls it feeding the wolf that represents this positive outlook.

Unfortunately, many of us have been feeding the wrong wolf for so long our brains have been conditioned to automatically look for the negative in a situation rather than the positive.

So how do we make a change? We must deliberately choose to “feed” the positive by retraining and renewing our way of thinking.

The good news is our brain physiology supports us in our efforts to make these changes. For instance, cognitive therapy offers some insight on how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact and suggests a technique that can be utilized to identify automatic negative thought processes and redirect them toward a new optimistic course. The technique is to not dwell on the negative thoughts when they pop up. Instead, we must stop ourselves at the moment of a negative response and then intentionally refocus our minds toward a better reaction or self-talk message. Practicing the new response by writing it down and reviewing it regularly will help strengthen the newly formed neurological pathway and reinforce the new habit of optimism.

Reading books and listening to speakers encouraging constructive, truthful self-talk can also be a way to condition our minds toward alternative, positive thoughts.

Glasses half full. Clouds with silver linings. Optimism is available to everyone, but it is a daily, moment by moment choice and must be deliberately cultivated. News flash to pessimists: you don’t have to be “realistic” any more. With a little practice and tapping into our natural brain physiology, the habit of thinking positively in any circumstance can happen in no time. - Elissa Shuck ©2009 Elissa Shuck and es-strategic, LLC

Twitter Hashtag Days - #BeOriginal

2009-09-16T04:50:00.002-05:00

Joan Koerber-Walker started the #BeOriginal hashtag as a response to all the recycling of old ideas going on in Twitterville. Joan's been a great friend of the Brainzooming blog, offering encouragement and great guest posts - including several extra for a rainy day if I run short on content!

Here are a few thoughts on creativity I've contributed to Joan's #BeOriginal Twitter list:

Les Paul guitar. Bo Diddley rhythm. Chuck Berry guitar licks. What have you or I done to create enduring "signatures"? There's a point where a signature element can become a creative rut. But for most of us, we have a long way to go to get to that point. Step 1 is identifying our talents and consistently applying them to develop a creative signature truly our own.

Something to strive for: Respecting your critics & seeing the beneficial points in their comments. You'll be better for it. It's not fun to have people criticize your work. But often, your critics are doing more to move you toward creative excellence than your most enthusiastic cheerleaders. You'll be better off if you can realize that and use it to your advantage.

It may be even harder to stop self-censoring than to quit censoring others. Cut yourself a creative break! As valuable as your critics can be, the critic inside your own head may be a fatal enemy. Learn to drown out the internal voice thwarting your creative exploration. Remember: creating art requires the ability to never say to yourself, "That's not really art."

And one final #BeOriginal thought born out of a real-life work experience where I was on the receiving end: Don't refuse to smile at someone you think is nobody. It will make it easier when you realize later they are somebody. - Mike Brown

Twitter Hashtag Days - #TwitterTwist

2009-09-15T04:50:00.003-05:00

I recently started using the hashtag #TwitterTwist for lessons and ideas inspired by tweets other people made. Here are some of the first of these:

Want to expand your perspectives on social media? Try explaining it to someone who isn't active in it. I've done various presentations and one-on-one conversations on social media recently with people who aren't very (if at all) active in it. Having to justify its value and dissect strategies for getting started really forces you to be on top of your game.

Read your jargon-filled email/memo/report. If it were written without jargon, how much clearer could it be? Jargon is the bane of modern business speech. Want to get rid of it in your own language? Check out "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots."

Don't watch the clock when talking with cherished friends & loved ones. Others things will wait. When you're with the important people in your life, stop the clock. Pay attention to them, not to how much time you're spending or to other things going on around you. They'll appreciate it. And you'll be a better person for it.

Recall how often the first time you did something turned out surprisingly well. Get over your apprehensions. This one's a challenge since I spend a lot of planning time thinking about all the bad things needing to be planned around. You too? Let's make a pact to visualize the best possible outcome and make it happen! - Mike Brown