The Brainzooming Group

The June Fast Company features its list of The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2013. Last year, we used the issue as a point of departure to share ideas, tips, and thought starters inspired by each of the creative people on the list. Last year’s series of Brainzooming posts based on the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012 has received great attention all year long, and for this year, we’re taking a bit of a twist.

Given interest in the recent Brainzooming post highlighting more than 200 strategic planning questions, we used the stories from the most creative people in business list to generate strategic thinking questions inspired by the varied creative successes represented in the issue.

As with last year’s Brainzooming recap, these questions AREN’T in the Fast Company issue. Instead, we applied our technique of taking a case study and imagining the questions that would inspire someone else to get to the same place as the person or business in the case study.

So to repeat: this is ALL NEW CONTENT you’ll be reading throughout our series of posts. Later in the week, I’ll explain WHY I’m being so emphatic about this being content you won’t see in Fast Company. Stay tuned for that!

Branding and Customer Experience Questions Inspired by the Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business 2013

Today’s list includes twenty-five strategic thinking questions on branding and customer experience. Later in the week, we’ll feature questions on creativity, content marketing, insights, and strategy.

Branding Questions

How can you change your brand experience to cause people to want to spend more time with the brand? (12. Liz Muller - DIRECTOR OF CONCEPT DESIGN, STARBUCKS)

How would an artist create a live art event starring your brand? (16. Ai Weiwei – ARTIST)

What could you do to grow a large enough audience and facilitate a way for them to want to talk about your brand more and longer? (19. Fred Graver - HEAD OF TV TEAM, TWITTER)

If “cute” is part of your brand personality, how can you make your brand experience more childlike to enhance its “cuteness”? (22. Phill Ryu and David Lanham - FOUNDERS, IMPENDING)

What do your customers love about your brand, and how do you respect what they love when you freshen your brand experience? (25. Jason Wilson - LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER, PINTEREST)

What are the hidden aspects of your brand experience that hold new, untold, and intriguing stories? (63. Roman Mars - HOST, 99% INVISIBLE)

How can you start serving the cool part of a market that isn’t being served sufficiently? (68. Rosie O’Neill and Josh Resnick - COFOUNDERS, SUGARFINA)

Customer Experience Questions

If your product were completely interactive with a user’s touch, why would it be exciting for them to touch the product? (15. Ivan Poupyrev - SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, DISNEY RESEARCH)

What are you doing to add more personalization (that provides value) into your customer experience? (17. Michelle Peluso - CEO, GILT GROUPE)

How would fewer choices make things easier and better for your customers? (67. Aerin Lauder - FOUNDER, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, AERIN)

How can you offer customers a smaller set of options, but give them more flexibility and higher performance as a trade-off? (30. Bob Mathews and Gary Chow - SENIOR RADIO FREQUENCY ENGINEERS, AT&T)

If you redesigned your business – even if it’s a stodgy business – around delivering “more fun for customers,” what would have to change about your customer experience? (35. Alli Webb - FOUNDER, DRYBAR)

How would your brand’s customer experience change if you designed it for the lowest common denominator technology instead of the newest technology? (4. Kirthiga Reddy - DIRECTOR OF ONLINE OPERATIONS, FACEBOOK INDIA)

What can you do to translate what you know about your customers into pleasant surprises for them? (46. Jackie Wilgar - EVP OF MARKETING, LIVE NATION)

What are new ways you can turn customer research efforts into customer design opportunities? (48. Tina Wells - FOUNDER, CEO, BUZZ MARKETING GROUP)

In what ways could you create opportunities for your customers to meet, talk, and bond? (56. Sarah Simmons – CHEF, CITY GRIT)

How can you make the online and offline experiences of your brand have the same feel? (64. Tare Lemmey - CEO, NET POWER & LIGHT)

If your customers don’t have a 100% success rate with your product or service, how can you make it more like something they can do/use with complete success? (66. Michael Buckwald and David Holz - COFOUNDERS, LEAP MOTION)

What can you do to feed information to customers about what other customers are thinking / choosing / doing right now? (70. Kevin Bruner - PRESIDENT, CTO, TELLTALE GAMES)

In what ways can you bring together people who wouldn’t otherwise meet but would find value in doing so? (71. Caroline Ghosn - FOUNDER, CEO, LEVO LEAGUE)

How could you turn a complicated process in your customer experience into a one-step process? (73. Katelyn Gleason - COFOUNDER, CEO, ELIGIBLE)

If your product requires training to use, what do you need to change about it so you can eliminate all training? (74. Aneel Bhusri - COFOUNDER, CO–CEO, WORKDAY)

What is pre-planned in your customer experience that would benefit from being spontaneous, and how can you make that happen? (75. Andy Cohen - TV HOST, EVP OF TALENT AND DEVELOPMENT, BRAVO)

How can you make it easier for potential customers to go from receiving a reminder about your brand to taking action (with telepathic communication as the end goal)? (85. Grace Woo - FOUNDER, PIXELS.IO)

If combining live events, social, and crowdsourcing is where it’s at, how do you use social to let the crowd, whether in-person or remotely, influence your event? (87. Bozoma Saint John - DIRECTOR OF CULTURAL BRANDING, MUSIC, AND ENTERTAINMENT, PEPSICO)

Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

I was in Nebraska City, NE the last weekend of April to attend the board meeting for Nature Explore (a client) and the annual Arbor Day festivities. My road trip from Kansas City provided several intriguing photo opportunities carrying worthwhile branding, creativity, and strategy lessons.

Branding Decisions – What do you think of Stoner Drug?

Don’t think highway advertising isn’t effective.

I’m not sure if the sign was new, but on the way up to Nebraska City, I noticed a small highway sign for the soda fountain at Stoner Drug in Hamburg, IA. While running behind and unable to stop, I left early on my return trip to make time for a brief detour into Hamburg to get a photo of Stoner Drug!

The picture was a hit on Facebook, prompting questions about whether they sold Doritos, why they don’t have grass in front, and wondering about expansion plans for the store (particularly into Colorado and Washington).

While the brand name is memorable, you have to wonder if it’s memorable in the best possible way, even though it is, I presume, a family name on the family business. Do you think Stoner Drug is a hard working brand name in a good way?

More Branding Decisions – Butt Burner Hot Sauce

Speaking of branding decisions, here’s another intriguing brand name for a sauce I spotted in the gift shop at the Arbor Day farm. While the packaging at least presents an idea of what type of butt is going to get burned, like Stoner Drug, this name too raises a whole array of others possibilities that make it a memorable name.

Both Trees and People Outgrow Roots

Roots are important for trees and people.

Roots that have been in place a long time can be both beneficial and detrimental. This tree demonstrates that. It appears to be taking its roots out of the ground as it grows. This seemed an appropriate metaphor for anyone who has been doing the same thing (whether personally or in a career) for a long time. If you have, it may be a good time to ask yourself if your roots are still providing a firm foundation or whether you may not be growing as much because your roots aren’t doing the job they used to do.

The Creative Value of Strategic Constraints

This sign by wood bridge on the way to the Arbor Day Farm gift shop provides a great real life example of the beneficial creative value of strategic constraints.

While it’s convenient to imagine that constraints crunch creativity, carefully chosen strategic constraints can be a significant instigator for creative thinking. In the case of this bridge’s construction, requiring that the natural surroundings not be disturbed, increased the construction challenge dramatically. It also increased the creativity as well, though. By removing the typical construction approaches for a bridge of this type, the designers and builders had to devise different ways to build the bridge that turned out to not only be less expensive but also protective of the woodland ecosystem.

E.T. and Friend

When we last checked in on the E.T. pipe sculpture at Bohl’s in Nebraska City, NE, he was all by himself. Now, he’s been joined by a Tom Servo-looking friend in the Bohl’s front window. I can’t wait to see what new sculptures will join these two in the future! - Mike Brown

Learn all about Mike Brown’s creative thinking and innovation presentations!

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

Working on developing a brand strategy for a client’s brand re-launch, we were brainstorming potential phrases for its brand promise and brand dimensions. We were starting with an extensive list of words we’d developed through a variety of brand-related strategic thinking exercises. While trying out word combinations to describe our client’s brand, we happened upon a new branding exercise.

Where Does Your Brand Live?

Here’s the scenario for this strategic thinking exercise:

Imagine your brand is relocating to an intersection in a new part of town where you get to select the names of the cross streets that will make up your brand address. With that freedom, what are the best names for the two streets where your brand lives?

As an example, we were at the seemingly ubiquitous Panera Bread for our meeting. You can imagine Panera Bread being located at the intersection of:

• Soups and Salads
• Meetings and Greetings
• Scones and Smoothies
• Drinks and Links (i.e., networking)
• Comfort Food and Uncomfortable Booths

Each of those intersections says something different about the Panera Brand brand – and that’s the point.

Don’t confine yourself to one set of cross streets. Imagine a whole variety of cross streets that could potentially be the current or, more importantly, the ideal address for your brand.

And once you have a long list of street name combinations, think about the possibilities relative to these questions:

• What others companies would be located near this intersection? Are they in your industry or other industries?
• What are the intersections where your competitors are located?
• How busy is your brand intersection?
• Is this intersection a prime location? Are property values around this intersection rising? Why or why not?
• Do people live in this area or do they just visit and leave?
• Why WOULD customers want to visit this intersection in this part of town?
• How likely is it that your intersection will, as other famous intersections have (think 12^th Street and Vine), be immortalized in a song?

The answers to all these questions should help you look at your brand and its strategic position relative to competitors and customers in a new and different way.

Strategic Thinking Exercises from the Brainzooming Lab

Most of the strategic thinking exercises we share have been well tested in client sessions.

This brand strategy exercise, however?

Well, we just came up with it last weekend! We’ll be trying this branding exercise out and welcome you to see how it works for you. If you take a shot at it, let us know how it works for helping clarify your new or existing brand strategy. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

A radio ad I used to hear all the time said, “The words you use matter.”

That is true for people, and it is especially true when you are figuring out how to brand a company. The brand language you strategically choose to describe what you do and how you do it sets the stage for both employees’ and customers’ expectations and satisfaction with your brand.

What types of brand language should you be using as you brand a company?

Seven Types of Brand Language You Should Use

As you develop (or refine) the brand language you are using, be on the lookout for each of these seven types of brand language to make sure you use words that are:

1. Simple

These are the easy to understand words that everyone knows and readily uses in your marketplace.

2. Emotional

The brand language that creates strong impact by tapping into an appropriate range of experience-based emotions.

3. Aspirational

Words that convey the hopes and dreams of employees, customers, and other stakeholders interacting with your company.

4. Unusual

Distinctive words whose less frequent use makes them stick out and become more memorable.

5. Connectable

These types of words readily pair up with other words, word parts, or phrases to create new and distinctive brand language.

6. Open

Brand language that brings depth to the brand because it can mean multiple things or apply in a variety of situations.

7. Twistable

Words you can use in varied ways and forms.

Pay Attention to Brand Language when Deciding How to Brand a Company

When devising your strategy for how to brand a company, don’t overlook the brand language. You can leave the selection of brand language to chance, accident, or time. Making solid brand strategy decisions on brand language, however, helps make sure the words you use not only matter, but also work as hard to benefit your brand as possible. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

I was writing a story for The Social Media Monthly magazine recently on the Mall of America and its social media strategy. In the course of interviewing Mall of America Senior Public Relations and Social Media Manager, Bridget Jewell, she discussed how the Mall introduced each of its social media presences based on a specific opportunity or seasonal campaign. Instead of immediately hopping on every new social network right away, MOA creates a presence when there’s a clear business reason to do so.

Not surprisingly then, as Bridget reviewed the content strategies and specific content media shared by channel, each had a different purpose. While its multiple social media presences are brand consistent and integrated, the Mall of America Twitter and Facebook sites are used differently (i.e., not simply sharing the same links), and Instagram isn’t simply for sharing photos from MOA YouTube videos.

Can you answer these 5 social media strategy questions as well as Mall of America can?

Taking a cue from the smart social media strategy at MOA, here are five questions any organization should ask about its own social media content strategy:

1. In what ways is our content well-suited to the specific social media network and our current and prospective users on each of them?
2. How is our content across the channels integrated and collectively representative of our brand?
3. How does our social media content vary across our different platforms?
4. What is included in our social media content to move the audience toward progressively beneficial behaviors for our organization?
5. What do we incorporate into our social media content that makes it worth remembering, sharing with others, and returning to in the future?

All five are very rich strategic questions. That means you need to be able to provide strategically rich answers.

Need some ideas for your social media strategy?

If you want to go to school on an organization doing it right to get a sense of how these questions should be answered, check out the varied social media presences for MOA. You’ll learn a lot – trust me. - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading

Today’s Brainzooming blog guest post comes via @FlyingSpatula, a former Brainzooming guest blogger. He direct messaged me over the weekend to let me know about a blog post his uncle, Sheldon Rozansky, founder of Les Specialistes HCS Montreal, wrote about how big box brands can be indifferent to and even downright contemptuous of customers. While this sucks for customers, he uses shortcomings at big box brands to create a competitive advantage when price competition isn’t an option. Here’s his take on crappy customer service at big box brands and how smaller competitors can fight back for themselves and their customers:

Big Box Brands and Crappy Customer Service by Sheldon Rozansky

One of my clients, Mike, purchased a laptop from a Big Box Brand Chain Store. They also sold him the extended warranty for which he shelled out over $200.  I am not a big fan of the extended warranty, but I wasn’t with him when he purchased the laptop or the extended warranty, so I couldn’t advise against it.

Six months later Mike called me because the new laptop had stopped working.  I visited him and after looking at the laptop for about 5 minutes, told him the hard drive was dead.  He asked if there was anything I could do to recover the data. I told him, “No.”  It was a hard drive failure, and it needed to be replaced.  He mentioned the extended warranty and how Big Box Brand Chain Store’s “HELP SQUAD” would fix everything.  I told him the manufacturer’s warranty would replace the hard drive anyway in the first year, but since he paid for the warranty, he might as well get it checked.

He asked, “How much do I owe you Sheldon?”

“Nothing. I didn’t fix anything. All I did as tell you the bad news.”

He thanked me, and away I went.

A week passed, and he told me about bringing the laptop to the Big Box Brand Chain Store.  “Yeah, Sheldon, they said they are going to charge me if they are able to recover the data. It’s about $260, but if they can’t recover the data, they are only going to charge me $59.”

I replied, “I have the same software they use to recover data. If I were able to do it, I would have. It is a physical issue with the drive. They can easily tell whether they can recover the data by testing the drive – which they should do to see if the drive is the issue for the warranty.  The only way you are getting your data back is through a data recovery specialist, and they charge much more than $260.  If these guys are using specialty equipment to recover your data then $260 is a bargain; otherwise they are just ripping you off.”

A few weeks more passed and Mike called. The Big Box Brand Chain Store couldn’t recover his data (surprise, surprise), but the hard drive had been replaced. “It will only cost $59.”

I asked, “Why is it costing you anything?????? You bought a stupid extended warranty. Please call me when you get there.”

Hand Him the Phone

I always loved the old advertising line, “You have a friend in the diamond business,” because I have always felt, “I am your friend in the computer business.”  When my customers – my friends – are about to get screwed by the Big Box Brand Chain Store, I fight for them. I do this because it is the right and honest thing, not because I get paid for it.

Mike called from the store to say he was being charged $59.  I told him to pass the phone to the computer guy.  He later told me the guy had no idea why the phone was passed to him.

“I have a question for you,” I told the Big Box Brand Chain Store guy. “Why is Mike being charged $59 for work covered by his extended warranty? Oh, and by the way, I should tell you that I am a computer technician.”

“He’s being charged because of the time we spent recovering data. We worked on the hard drive for 2 days with special software,” he replied.

“Don’t lie to me. I know how recovery works. You didn’t recover any data. In fact if you had examined the hard drive you would have seen it was DEAD and needed to be replaced under the manufacturer’s warranty. You would have had to look at the hard drive anyway to send it to the manufacturer. If it took you 2 days to find out it was dead, you guys are the most incompetent people I have ever seen.”

“Umm, yes sir you’re right. We were able to see the drive was dead, and it was covered by the manufacturer’s warranty”

“So why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“You told me you were working on it for 48 hours, and you are charging my friend for all those unnecessary hours.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then why are you charging him $59?”

“No, I am not. He was mistaken. Since we didn’t recover anything and he has an extended warranty, we weren’t going to charge him anything.”

The phone was passed back to Mike, and I told him, “The guy says he wasn’t going to charge you for any of this.”

“He’s lying,” Mike said.

“Well, you’re getting back all your money for this non-job,” I replied.

Mike didn’t have to pay. He later told me, “These guys weren’t going to give back a dime if they didn’t speak to you.”

Competing Against Crappy Customer Service at Big Box Brands

What bothers me most about this is the dishonesty. Mike was sold an extended warranty. That is a contract between customer and vendor that if the product becomes defective, the vendor will honor the agreement to maintain the product. It shows the vendor is willing to stand behind its products.

I run my computer business by giving clients the best personalized service possible. Knowledge, skill set, and honesty are my advantage. I am honored when someone has faith and trust in the business I have built to understand I ALWAYS try to do the right thing. I have accepted that the Big Box Brand Chain Store can beat me to submission on price, but never on service.

The Big Box Brand Chain Store should realize an extended warranty is a sign the customer honors your beliefs, and you will do the right thing.  It is not an agreement that “the client was an idiot the first time when we sold him this useless extended warranty and now we know we can charge him for ANYTHING!!!!!” – Sheldon Rozansky

Guest Author

The Brainzooming blog has a wonderful group of guest authors who regularly contribute their perspectives on strategy, creativity, and innovation. You can view guest author posts by clicking on the link below.

More Posts

Continue Reading

Any time we have an all eyes on the news tragedy, there is a question about what brands should do with their social media content:

• Do you act like major networks and news programs and start exclusively sharing updates and (second hand) news about the tragedy?
• Do you act like a cable network and keep up with whatever social media content was already planned, irrespective of the news?
• Do you go completely dark out of respect for the tragedy and its victims?

So, what do you do with social media during a tragedy?

David Armano offers five pieces of advice for brands and how they should conduct themselves. It is great advice oriented toward a brand with a larger collaborative social media effort, although some of it (review your scheduled content and remove anything sensitive) applies across the board.

Another piece of advice from David Armano, summed up as “Do the Right Thing,” is a great sentiment, but there’s no one answer to what the right thing to do is.

One safe answer seems to be sending out your brand’s thoughts to a tragedy’s victims. Thoughts are nice, although not particularly efficacious. Some brands take advantage of their large audiences to help broadcast emergency and relief updates. Some brands are willing to go out on a limb and offer prayers. Since many times all you can do in these situations is pray or pay (i.e., donate), prayers are at the top of the heap to help victims.

Other brands, keep on with what social media content was already planned (or inappropriately chosen amid the tragedy), as others (typically individuals) spend their time calling these brands out for their social media miscues.

Perhaps the safest answer is to go dark in the face of tragedy. The challenge is there are tragedies and victims daily.

So does that mean a brand should NEVER share any social media?

No, it doesn’t.

But when there’s discussion about the importance of being “human” on social media, it’s not some b.s. social media strategy mumbo jumbo. You DO have to be human with your social media content, no matter how big or small your brand is.

And if you’re human with your social media sharing every day, you have a lot better chance of getting it right when a human tragedy is close enough to intersect with your social media content.  – Mike Brown

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:

Continue Reading