In Brand Positioning Tip #3, I introduced the concept of the brand mantra. The term was originally coined by Scott Bedbury during his time at Nike, and it refers to a short 3-5 word phrase created to capture the very essence of the brand’s meaning.

Usually a brand mantra includes or hints at some of the points of difference discovered during the brand positioning exercise (learn more about points of difference here). The most famous example of a brand mantra is from Bedbury’s Nike project, where the team coined the brand mantra Authentic Athletic Performance.

The most important thing to understand about brand mantras is that they are not designed to be externally facing slogans or taglines. Case in point— unless you’ve heard the Nike brand mantra story before, you’ve probably never seen the phrase Authentic Athletic Performance associated with Nike in advertising. Usually you will see an external manifestation of it, Just Do It being the prime example.

This is where most well-meaning brand mantra projects go bad. When brainstorming possible brand mantras, it is important for your team to be very clear that they are not writing advertising copy or taglines for external use. There is no quicker path to an inauthentic brand mantra than heading too quickly toward the language of advertising or marketing.

A brand mantra should resonate internally first. The mantra you chose should reflect the core values, mission, and culture of the company while also staying true to the brand positioning (if this is difficult, you’ve got bigger problems, because it may mean your culture and your brand are out of alignment).

The most powerful brand mantras become part of the DNA of the organization, and are used to guide everyday decisions about strategy, user experience, voice, and a host of other things. The mantra becomes a touchstone that is returned to over and over again— especially when decisions start getting tough.

Once you’ve settled on your brand mantra and tested it internally to ensure it resonates, you can finally start working on taglines. Again, think of a tagline as an external manifestation of the brand mantra— written in a language that will resonate with your target customer instead of your co-workers.

[Read the rest of this post on Dark Matter Matters]

It’s a good bet that the next generation of defining companies will have corporate cultures built the open source way– around openness and collaboration, while fostering community and culture that extend outside the company walls.

In fact many of the defining companies of the first decade of this century show these characteristics (with one very notable exception we discussed earlier).

It kind of makes you want to rush in and see if you can change your old style corporate culture and get in on the action. But try to change too fast and your efforts may backfire.

So here are three signs that your corporate culture may not quite be ready for the open source way– and some tips to help you move closer.

[Read the rest of this post over at opensource.com]

Lately we’ve been working with the public sector on some community building efforts. In a recent session we introduced a team to open source principles, general use of collaborative web technologies, and the latest on-line civic participation work. Then, we asked them to do some searching on their own for public sector platforms or campaigns for participation.

Here’s what they came up with during the short span of time. You may have seen most of these sites, and many more are out there. The team was quick to point out that some organizations are definitely doing it better than others. If you have stellar, or not-so-stellar, examples share them.

Open Government Innovations Gallery
Santa Cruz Budget
Wikified Army Field Guide
CDC IdeaLab
Regulations.gov
Apps for Democracy
Massachusetts Open Data Initiative
Data.gov
Kansas Transportation Online Community

Clearly, it’s no longer groundbreaking. And, as people make that necessary switch from evangelist to practitioner, the question should be: Are we paying attention and doing things as effectively as we can?

Not all these efforts have the same aim, and with the ever-maturing taxonomy of all things open it’s important to know what model is best suited for the situation. But, what we’re interested in is community building. The most basic distinction we can make is the difference between the two often-thrown around terms crowdsourcing and open source, as David and Chris each wrote here and here, respectively.

This is where the real work and next frontier for practitioners exists. It’s not just technology, press releases, or prize money. Rather, it’s the overall strategy, design, and message of the platform (loosely defined) constructed and carried out as a coherent method for creating and engaging a community.

There are some things to pay attention to here. They might be brushed off as questions and challenges, but more importantly they’re opportunities to do things well.

-Is what we’re asking of the community in line with interest and ability?

-Are there clear goals; ones either agreed to or developed by the community?

-Is this platform reinforcing or improving a representative democracy and all that comes with it, rather than replacing or detracting from it?

-How sustainable is the community, should it be a short-term or a long-term effort?

-Do we have a way to measure the health of the community and the know-how and tools to guide it when needed?

-Are the legal and technical dimensions set appropriately so that innovation happens within and external to the community?

-Do we bring the right physical world characteristics, attitudes, and norms that we want and maybe discourage the ones we don’t want?

-Do we have an idea of even what this “we” means and where that “we” should fall on the spectrum from free-for-all to facilitator to despot?

These are just a handful of the things we work on and pay attention to daily (along with my collaborators at Georgia Tech). Anyone embarking on a community building or participation project, especially in the public sector, needs to be, too. Community building like many things will always be more of an art than a science, but with the growing examples out there we need to do a better job generalizing knowledge from both successes and failures.

Tinkering with a brand, whether public or private, and requesting the participation and precious time of others, is not something where you just roll out a platform and hope. We can and should get to the point where there is a degree of certainty in practice. And, of course, share the knowledge.

When I first entered the corporate world five years ago after nearly twenty years of running my own business, I was definitely a fish out of water. As a direct report to the CEO, I participated in many of the most important conversations taking place in the company. Being a designer, I often had points of view rather different from the other executives sitting around the table. Sometimes, after offering such a point, I would find them looking at me like I was insane.

The last two days I’ve posted blogs based on articles in recent editions of MITSloan Management Review and the Harvard Business Review. I thought I would share a sample of the best quotes from these magazines— today I’ll focus on HBR (JULY/AUG 2009); tomorrow I’ll look at the MITSloan. While these thoughts and research-based ideas may be new to the business world, they are not to the design world.

The Big Shift— Measuring the Forces of Change

“One of the easiest but most powerful ways firms can achieve the performance improvements promised by technology is to jettison management’s distinction between “creative talent” and the rest of the organization. All workers can continually improve the performance by engaging in creative problems solving, often by connecting with peers inside and outside the firm.”

from HBR; July/Aug 2009; “Leadership in the New World”

“An executive team on its own can’t find the best solutions. But leadership can generate more leadership deep in the organization.”

“Embrace disequilibrium— keeping people in a state that creates enough discomfort to induce change, but not so much that they fight, flee, or freeze.”

from HBR; July/Aug 2009; “Strategy in the New World: The 10 Trends You Have to Watch”

“Corporate leaders need to demonstrate to civil society that they understand popular and political concerns related to executive compensation, risk management, board oversight, and the treatment of employees facing layoffs.”

Management models “need to incorporate more-realistic version of human behavior— most likely by drawing on behavior economics, becoming more dynamic, and integrating real-world feedback— and… business leaders need to get better at using them.”

Regulation in the New World: Government in Your Business

“The changes afoot have been on the horizon for some time, thanks to long-term trends such as deepening public distrust of business.”

Shareholders First? Not So Fast…

“Why should past labor (capital) receive so much preference over current labor (employees)?”

“Consider that there are literally scores of recent studies showing the gains in profitability and productivity that companies have made— not by putting investors’ interests first but by implementing high-commitment work practices. These include investing in training, decentralizing decision making, and having pay contingent on organizational, not just individual, performance. Other sources show the benefits companies reap from customer loyalty and high levels of customer satisfaction.”

[DB NOTE: I was struck by the use of "high-commitment" rather that "accountability" in the paragraph above. Machine parts need to be "accountable" but innovative organizations thrive via deep personal commitment. Fodder for a future blog]

Restoring America’s Competitiveness

“Corporate management must overhaul its practices and governance structures so the no longer exaggerate the payoffs and discount the dangers of outsourcing production and cutting investments in R&D.”

“Stop blaming Wall Street for short-term behavior… When companies promise to increase returns quarter after quarter, that’s what Wall Street expects. But when they articulate a credible long-term strategy and demonstrate a capacity to execute that strategy, the capital markets have given them the necessary room to achieve it.”

“Managers would serve their companies more wisely by recognizing that informed judgment is a better guide to making such decisions than an analytical model loaded with arbitrary assumptions. There is no way to take the guesswork out of the process.

“Only be rejuvenating its innovative capabilities can America return to a path of sustainable growth.”

Sane or insane? You decide. More tomorrow…

Famed social ecologist and the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker once advised that the only purpose of a business is to create customers. That type of thinking lead companies to conduct marketing research, determine who their customers are and what their customer want to hear. They created positioning platforms, messaging, advertising— the whole nine yards— in an effort to create customers. For the second half of the 20th century, that model kicked ass. At least for the advertising and marketing firms who did it well. Or could convince their clients they did it well.

Today’s world is different. Duh. Customers are in control. They don’t believe authoritative voices. They don’t trust their messages. They no longer trust the media such companies employ. They don’t have to; they now connect to more authentic voices that they trust via the internet and other social media. It’s second nature.

The broad and rapidly growing consumer preference for networked media means that traditional advertising is now suspect.  The media of advertising comes with an underlying meaning— an agreed upon contract that the advertiser may bullshit you if that helps them make a sale.  That’s the meaning. We all know it. The medium is the message.

So what’s a company to do? Branding is about building credibility. About establishing and scaling your reputation. So, why use social or networked media— such trendy media— to build brand?

Networked media isn’t important because it’s trendy. It’s important because it creates customer-driven innovation. It creates brand evangelists. It can help build a collaborative internal culture and engaged work force. It demands authenticity— especially in the form of customer experience.

So can Twitter really save brands that don’t provide good experiences? That’s the question asked by Fast Company blogger Rupa Chaturvedi, who cautions companies against relying on social media to influence customer behavior when the brand doesn’t live up to the hype they’re trying to create.

These networks can be a highly effective way to build your brand externally. But there’s a catch. It only works when the messages are true. You know they’re true when they’re open. And transparent. And valuable. You know they’re successful when the network grows organically.

But Twitter, Facebook, etc. are the media. They are not the strategy. The strategy is community building. Community building is the ‘new’ marketing.

I [heart] Hope.

Perhaps the topic is dated now. It’s so two weeks ago. But recently one of the design world’s greatest and most beloved icons— Milton Glaser— entered into the Sheppard Fairey v. Associated Press copyright battle. Mr. Glaser is famous for creating the I [heart] NY art along with dozens (hundreds, thousands) of other iconic graphic designs. He’s something of a hero to me.

Now, my friend Paul Jones has been twittering up a proper storm about Fairey’s lawyer— Tony Falzone— being on UNC Chapel Hill’s campus this week. So I thought I’d enter into the fray myself.

My initial response— what an industrial-age argument to be having!

As I read the Print Magazine interview, Glaser’s lack of comfort seemed to be caused less by the legal argument of ownership and more centered on the ethics of attribution and the moral issues of training young artists and designers in art and craft. I’m in full agreement on those issues.

But does anyone really think the AP or its photographer could have used its own ‘art’ on posters, t-shirts, et. al. and created an effect similar to that of Fairey’s poster? No reasonable person believes that.

Fairey created an iconic image out of a generic photograph. I love and respect Milton Glaser and everything he means to the design profession. But if he is arguing the legal issues involved, I’m afraid he will be asked to eat his hat by Falzone, if it pleases the court. Let’s all pray it doesn’t come to that. [DISCLAIMER: I, of course, AM NOT A LAWYER, judge or legal scholar, although I sometimes like to mimic the lines of the judge in Miracle on 34th Street: "Overruled!"]

Perhaps the talents and products of artists and designers have been so devalued over the last century or two that we’ve had to protect ourselves as best we can. We’ve prospered by successfully assigning value to the artifacts we create.

But culture and the creative process is the real creator of value. And that value is diminished any time artifacts are the sole representation of value. We can’t even see it anymore. But open source software development is a powerful proof point.

Value in open source software is found in the community of developers, in the culture and the authentic meritocracy their culture demands. It’s found in the genuine participation of customers and partners throughout the entire ecosystem. It’s messy. But businesses who serve and support those participants provide value. Those who seek to control, own or exploit the culture of these communities lose value.

This is one of the reasons I love Red Hat’s new mission statement (my good friends Chris Grams and Jonathon Opp are still up to good). Detailed in Matt Asay’s blog (where he read it in a Red Hat ‘bathroom briefing’), it is simple, beautiful and right on target.

“To be the catalyst in communities of customers, developers, and partners creating better technology the open source way”

I suspect that one might puzzle Mr Ford, too.

The opportunity for the design profession to redefine its own value is now. We will lose out again if we defend old models of ownership that are increasingly irrelevant. Each of us has to decide whether we believe primarily that design is a driver of innovation and problem solving, or of property. I’ll stand with the open source community, Fairey, Andy Warhol, Public Enemy and Isaac Newton on this one.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if Fairey stood with me too. Argh.

Some historians don’t like using the term ‘revolution’ when discussing the Industrial Age. Their point is that the transitions between Ages was more evolutionary. Chronologically speaking, I agree with this point of view. But I still prefer the term revolution as it refers to the social effects humans experienced.

With change came an unwritten contract. As people accepted the idea of spending their lives doing machine-like work, their expectations for security grew. Increased power of the worker manifested itself in the form of unions. And over a few hundred years of ardent and often violent interaction, advances on the behalf of the Industrial Age’s laborers continued to improve the workers’ standard of living. Businesses did pretty well too, history shows.

It became easier for individuals to accept the sacrifices of personal freedom. Over time, workers began to feel loyalty to many of the companies who employed them. Thirty and forty year careers with one company became common. Good paying jobs and benefits created safe families and opportunities to better the lives of future generations. Children and grandchildren often looked to follow their parents into the same companies, trusting in the status quo.

But a funny thing happened on the road to efficiency and productivity. Labor unions drove great improvements. But power corrupts. Labor unions were no exception. Soon, one ‘top-down’ boss was replaced by another. The influence of labor unions quickly began to wither.

In 1981, when newly inaugurated president Ronald Reagan fired every striking air traffic controller across the nation, the death knell rang. Corporations began in earnest to redraw the lines. They increased pressure on unions by moving jobs off shore.  As mothers entered the work force in far greater numbers they added substantially to their families’ fortune thereby postponing the real experience such consequences bring. But the writing was on the wall.

Today, the consequences are plain and painful. Mathematics proves that changing one side of an equation necessitates an equal change on the other side. Working conditions— where work still exists— have declined. Yet, over the past 28 years, executive compensation increased from 40 times the pay of the average worker to more than 360 times the pay of average workers by 2007. No one should be surprised that employees are less loyal than they were a generation ago.

While the power of well-organized unions has greatly diminished, workers are now discovering the power of networked associations. Bottoms up. Transparent. Authentic. Power is spread between groups and individuals alike. Nimble. Immediate. Scalable. Regardless of how you label it, we live in a new and equally revolutionary Age. Loyalty to any big power is dead.

‘Engagement’ is the new word. If you believe in meaningful data, take a look at the work Gallup has done in this area. Gallup presents a new kind thinking aimed at the most relevant business management practices for today’s work forces. It is non-intuitive to most current corporate leaders and managers. One key survey question they ask of workers is “do you have a best friend at work?’ The answer is a key indicator of corporate success.

They’ve titled their thinking Human Sigma. Here are the five basic principles:

* Employee and customer experiences must be managed together — not as separate entities.
* Emotions drive and shape the employee-customer encounter.
* The employee-customer encounter must be measured and managed at the local level.
* Employee and customer engagement interact to drive enhanced financial performance. This interaction can be quantified and summarized with a single performance metric.
* Sustainable improvement in the employee-customer encounter requires disciplined local action coupled with a company-wide commitment to changing how employees are recruited, positioned in roles, rewarded and recognized, and importantly, how they are managed.

When the media is the message and your company must be innovative to compete, any leadership discussion of loyalty will be viewed as propoganda. That includes ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’ and ‘commitment.’ If it is not transparent that these conversations are two-way processes, then leaders and managers who try to force these messages will lose credibility and relevance.

Loyalty is dead. Love live engagement. Thanks Gallup.