Google’s Automated Cars & Your Business

Written by on October 11, 2010 in Blog - No Comments

So Google is getting into the automotive industry? Should we be surprised? No.

In fact, Google employs more NASA employees than NASA actually does. Meaning: Google wants to change the world and they will do it through the minds of the most intelligent folks they can get their hands on and because of that initiative we can determine that the future will look more like iRobot than it will look like Detroit or any other American city.

Having robo-cars driving all over the place may sound interesting, but what does it actually mean for you as a business leader or decision maker?

Quite simply, it serves as another reminder than you need to always be seeking to reinvent your business. To adapt, to evolve, to refocus. With new technology comes a world of new opportunity but it also brings with it a world of risk. Lets say you’re GM and the way you have always built cars is about to forever change due to the development of some dudes in Mountain View, California. You have two choices, resist or cash in. You can resist by stating that the world will never want to actually drive (or ride in) an automated car or you can cash in by co-branding your offering with the new technology (BTW: Get ready America to start thinking about Sony and Google TV hand in hand).

This is exactly what Sony has done. Google rolls out a platform that could forever impact a company like Sony who bases large portions of their revenue off of console gaming and televisions – both items addressed in the aim of Google TV. Sony decided to jump on board and brand its offering with Google and now they will have the worlds greatest advertising agent assisting in their sales going forward. The overall impact of this decision is yet to be determined. However, it has to be very clear to Sony’s competitors that they are currently on the outside looking in.

All this being said, you can ultimately resist or cash in on new developments. Which will you do? Keeping your business conservative but forward-thinking can be a real challenge. However, it could be the most critical challenge you can address within your offering.

How focused is your brand?

Written by on September 20, 2010 in Blog - No Comments

The world of design offers a lot of possibilities for designers and entrepreneurs alike. And truth be told, no designer wants to design a stale, boring design piece and no entrepreneur wants to completely blend in. However, it is important to note that in the midst of design and branding, the focus of presenting a unique brand the properly tells your story is never more important. If your brand in any way leads people in direction anywhere beyond what you are actually offering, your brand has defeated its purpose. Your purpose is also defeated if your business appears generic, stale, or cookie-cutter.

Seth Godin provides a great assessment of the importance of having a quality descriptive brand name.

“Jewelry Central is a really bad brand name. So are Party Land, Computer World, Modem Village, House of Socks and Toupee Town.

It’s a bad brand name because Central or Land or World are meaningless. They add absolutely no value to your story, they mean nothing and they are interchangeable. “Here honey, I bought you these cheap earrings at Diamond World!” Not only are they bland, but you can’t even remember one over the other. This is the absolute last refuge of a marketer who has absolutely nothing to say and can’t even find the guts to stand for what they do. It’s just generic.

The second reason this is an exceedingly dangerous strategy is that if you start to succeed a little bit, you suddenly want to protect your lame name. So you hire a lawyer and start to harass people for using the English language. So Computer Land sued Business Land (or maybe it was the other way around) and lost. Or consider the angry lawyer at Jewelry Village (or was it Central, I can’t remember) who sent a letter to Squidoo complaining about an editorial (not a retail) page that used the phrase. There are more than 15,000 matches for this phrase in Google, which means he’s got a lot of letters to send, and a lot of people to annoy. For what? Even if he manages to make a lot of noise, he’s just reminding the world how generic the phrase is in the first place. Can you name one successful brand (except Pizza Hut and I think they succeeded despite the name) that managed to pull this off? [Yes, there's Central Market and IHOP and Radio Shack... thanks for the submissions. I'm going to argue that in each case, the name slowed down something else that was truly powerful...]

You can do better.”

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/a-dumb-branding.html

With all of this it is important to keep in mind what your brand actually is. The identity of your brand really is multiple.

Your brand is:

1. Your Company Name & Your Product Name(s)
2. Your presentation – regardless of format (spoken & visual presentation, business cards, store front, website, etc.)
3. You and your employees (The employees of Zappos.com are a great example of the importance of acknowledging the branding power of your employees because customer service is very much a part of a brand.)
4. Your reputation inside and outside of your industry
5. Your Mission
6. Your Vision
7. Any slogans or tag-lines
8. Employee policies
9. Company Culture
10. Corporate Culture