…and kinky boots.  Okay, forget the kinky part - it’s not that kind of blog.   I’ve been planning on posting something here about ropes and chains for quite some time now, but I keep letting the idea get too big in my head.  Really it is simple:  Chains are strong because the individual components, the links, are strong.  The chain is no stronger than any given link.  If you’ve got strong components, make a chain.   Ropes are strong, but they are built on an entirely different premise.  The rope is built on the assumption that any given component, a fiber, might be weak.  The rope’s strength comes from its structure - the weave causes each individual fiber to support and strengthen each other. It is only when the structure is compromised that the rope gets weak.

So what does this have to do with branding?  Well, are you building your brand as a chain or a rope?  Are you trying to forge a handful of powerful, strong, individual and expensive pieces to carry and support your brand positioning? Are you relying solely on individual contributors - a CEO, a spokesperson, one brilliant marketeer, a single flagship product? Or are you creating an infrastructure to support your brand that allows each individual contributor - each ad, each product, each tag line, each front line employee, even each customer -  to reinforce and strengthen the brand message by providing a context for their efforts?  

The “golden arch” is a familiar link in McDonald’s branding chain, but the training to say “Would you like fries with that?” is the brilliant evidence of a structure that allows each employee (weak or strong) to strengthen the rope.

I love Atlanta. I’ve been here for almost 12 years and I think it is a great city. We’ve got millions of people,  great neighborhoods, great restaurants,  a major airport, lots of free wi-fi, plenty of diverse businesses, a healthy laptop per capita ratio in any coffee shop you should happen to wander into, but somehow I think that Atlanta is not living up to its potential as a great center for web innovation.   And I don’t think I am alone in this opinion.

I’m not saying there is no innovation here, but I think as a city we are a little behind the times.  I offer as example the reluctant adoption of Web 2.0 in Atlanta.  Web 2.0 as both  a term and a practice seems to have only grudgingly been accepted in the Atlanta business world.   Sure, there is a growing pool of adopters leading the charge at events like SoCon07 and 08, AWE, and Barcamp, but to call them early adopters would only be accurate in a geographically limited definition.  They’re early for Georgia, but not for the world.  I’d like to see that change.

I think Atlanta should skip Web 2.0.  Not skip as in miss, but skip as in skip ahead.  Instead of playing perpetual catch-up with innovation centers like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston and NY, we should leap-frog those places and boldly invest in our time, money, thoughts and effort in redefining the context of the Internet.  The web has become the plumbing of our lives. Business is changing, marketing is changing, socializing is changing, lines are blurring, but we drag our feet and take incremental steps toward ideas that come to us from the west coast.

There are people in this town who would like to see Atlanta at the center of the discourse - a legitimate force in shaping our collective destinies through technology and its catalytic effect on human interaction.  And there is no reason why we can’t be, but we won’t get there by being a follower.  We need to figure out what Web 4.0 is, or 5.0, or maybe dare to embrace a term that isn’t Web x.x anything, but something new, something ambitious, something risky.  We might look silly, but we also may find a point of view, a value, a context that re-centers the discourse.

Let’s start talking.

That’s a nice pairing of words; “soulful excellence”.  Highly evocative, together they smack of quality and emotion, like art - not clinical quality, like a spreadsheet.  So few pairings of words smack of anything so I just had to point them out.  I wish I could say they were mine, but alas credit must go to the remarkable Joey Reiman who uttered that phrase yesterday during a presentation for the Technology Association of Georgia’s Enterprise 2.0 Society. Yesterday we had a fabulous meeting featuring Mr. Reiman, Thinker & CEO and Elizabeth Clubb, Thinker & CSO, of BrightHouse.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the phrase itself is that it was used in the context of discussing new enterprise technology solutions.   The social computing mindset is different: powerful and enabling and dangerous to old modes of thinking.  It is changing the way we brand and the way we work.  They are becoming one. “Soulful Excellence” is evidence of that.  Chew on that phrase and watch out for more.

Sometimes the good stuff leaps out at you during a random phone call. Tonight it was from my good friend David Bailey, a source of many gems, but this one I particularly liked. So, with his permission:

If your customer has a mouse, don’t build the better mousetrap. Just trap that mouse.

Don’t just focus on what you can do. Focus on solving your customer’s problem.

It is getting to be a habit and I like it!  Kathleen Smart has invited me to once again visit the Connect Grow Profit Radio show, part of the Blog Talk Radio network. The show will “air” live at 12pm eastern on Monday, April 14th 2008, and then be available as a podcast.

We’ll be discussing the self-service culture of the internet, the pitfalls of virtual “location”, and the essential elements of web branding: Clarity, Authenticity and Consistency.

Listeners will be able to call in with questions by dialing the Call-in Number:  (646) 716-8171.

Just wanted to share two great quotes from a terrific article: “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad in this month’s Harvard Business Review. The first is the teaser for the article:

“It’s a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else.”

Although the article is discussing strategy statements I think this speaks to the vital importance of brand positioning and the all-to-common void of clarity in this area from the corner office on down the line. The second quote points to the solution by affirming the power of well-chosen words to act as a catalyst for brand alignment:

I love it!

Only Jeff Pulver would fly around the world hosting “Social Media Breakfasts” and thank goodness!   This was a great event, lots of fun.   I don’t know if the concept is Jeff’s originally, but he has been going  from city to city on a mission to bring social computing techniques to real-world networking.   Using the web 2.0 metaphor of tagging and Facebook “Walls” you have a great icebreaker for starting conversations  and learning more about the person you just shook hands with.  The photo above is my personal tag cloud from about halfway through the event.

You need to be on Facebook to rsvp, but if Jeff brings one of these events to your town, definitely check it out.   If not, host your own and send me an invite!

My friend Mike just sent me a link to a nice article on personal branding: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online by Jonathan Snook.  First of all, I happen to think it is one of the more attractively and readably designed blogs that I’ve seen lately, but I’m recommending the article for different reasons. Seven reasons to be exact.  Actually seven very practical tips for stepping up your engagement in your personal brand, that Mr. Snook has thoughtfully provided.   I won’t spoil his thunder, but I will say that I think these are good, easy to do steps that will help raise your recognizability online. And as you know that is the first of the three Rs of branding.

Visit: Maintaining your Personal Brand Online

Yes, I admit it.  Sometimes I will indulge in a little high-brow, high-level or high-concept marketing-speak.  I can’t help it, it is in my nature (blame the right brain).   That’s why I am glad that I have friends like Dave Eissman to keep me grounded, and I hope you don’t mind if I give him and his new blog a plug:

Dave has a knack for breaking down marketing tactics into straight forward, approachable steps that get results.  I have had the good fortune to collaborate with Dave on behalf of the International Business Academies, Limited, for whom we are both advisers, and I have always admired his straightforward, make-it-practical approach as well as his warm and generous nature.  Dave recently started a new blog - One on Many Marketing, and his current post, What is One on Many Marketing? is a wake-up call to B-to-B businesses to make use of the efficient tools of the Internet to bring scale to their lead generation and relationship building processes.  Dave is offering a free tele-seminar on the subject (details here) - I plan to attend and I hope I’ll see you online then too.

Have you ever tried to walk across the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool? It may have been fun bouncing along under the surface, but you certainly didn’t get anywhere very fast. What works very efficiently on dry land is almost completely ineffectual under the water.

Now imagine trying to swim down a sidewalk. Sounds painful doesn’t it? Without the buoyancy you would just grind in place. Change your medium and what was once an asset can become a liability, a successful tactic might just be limiting your progress or bringing it to a grinding halt.

I’m a big believer in paying attention to context, what works in print may not work in radio. What works on the radio, might not work for TV. The big new swimming pool is social media. Not every marketing tactic is going to work the same in the social web. Some old standbys may not work at all. Trying too hard to control the message and interrupting people will leave you bouncing in one place running out of air. Sharing, educating, listening and participating seem to be the better strokes in these new waters.