Watch this video. Maybe not new to many of you, but important.

I can’t ever remember hearing about the agencies responsible for this kind of work coming under criticism. Can somebody point me to an instance? Because I’m wondering why. Is it wrong to keep the agencies responsible for this stuff out scrutiny? Why are they immune from criticism? Can’t they say no to the work?

Arthur Anderson wasn’t exactly excused in the Eron’s misdeeds.

Values matter. We make decisions based on them. Those decisions create good, spread ideas, move us forward. Or they contribute to the dynamics in our world we know aren’t of value.

I bet that there’re more than a few agencies who’ve turned down work like this. I’d love to hear their stories. Where can you search for Not Agency of Record? I’d like to get inspired by the work of those kinds of agencies. Not these.

Let’s get to the simple side of complexity. Try this on for size, fellow branding geeks.

Branding happens in three stages:

1. What you think you’re gonna get
2. What you actually get
3. What you’re gonna do about it

Building a brand is about asking and answering three questions:

1. What do I/we do well?
2. How I/do we do it differently?
3. Why does it matter?

And managing a brand is about one thing:

1. Inspiring a shared vision.

Will that work?

Feelin all rainbow-y today.

I nursed a cold in front of the TV Friday night. Given the election season in Colorado, this was an exercise for the mute button.

I wonder how it would feel knowing you’ve achieved something in your life by primarily bringing down the competition instead of proving your own worth? Would you consider that an achievement?

This, even more than the general nastiness of the ads, was depressing. Due to the onslaught of negativity, I’m feeling a strange urge to contribute something positive to the morass. My part to counter the vibe as it were. After all, there so many more people dedicated to (as a client of mine put it) staying focused on the we’ve never been here before as opposed to the this isn’t working.

People with a profound awareness of this reality are all around me. I’m a lucky guy. A few examples from the work side of my life that’s keeping me hopeful:

I helped write a job description for a client recently. The title of the job was Director of Social Capital. How cool is that?

I’ve just begun consulting work for a client who’s starting a business based on values. Yep – the economic logic will come after we (I’m honored that he thinks of me as a partner in this process, beyond a client-consultant relationship) decide the kind of enterprise we want to build, and how we want to run it. How cool is that?

I finished a branding platform project for a client who’s interested in changing the way we think about food. How we source it, how much of it we should eat, and how it’s crafted. They’re trying to grow as much of their own ingredients as possible. They think of food as something to honor, not as a resource. They welcome all staff voices at the table regardless of their job title. The owner has visions of a hog farm to create a zero-waste enterprise. How cool is that?

I’m in the midst of branding an institute that, if the vision comes to be, will facilitate sustainable development training for leaders. Not just the environmental integrity part that we all know about. But integrating environmental integrity with social justice and economic prosperity into the core strategies of running businesses. One of the leaders in this initiative truly believes that this notion of sustainability will be to our future business leaders what quality is to us. That it will soon enough transcend the “latest idea” into the ticket to play in business. How cool is that?

I’m lucky, fortunate, psyched… animated as my entrepreneur client puts it. These politicians can make their hay the way they need to make it. I’ll side with people who are looking at the opportunities.

But I was recently face-to-face with a few consultants and business owners who’ve motivated to write a bit more about this. I not sure why this is still in my craw, but here it is.

If your client isn’t doing something that is painfully obvious to you, it’s a sign that your client has a leadership maturity to be admired. That you know about their stupid actions or doltish inactions at all – that is, that they called you in the first place – is a signal that they realize they have a weakness and are serious enough in what they do to put their ego aside and call in someone to help.

Would that it were me.

We shouldn’t be dismayed or amazed at what they aren’t doing or don’t know. I’m quite sure that every one of us would seem like a child in the presence of certain experts who’d point out our inadequacies and how dangerously close to the edge we are in either missing a huge opportunity or screwing something up for good. An intellectual property lawyer (that image on my blog isn’t Creative Commons licensed?), a leadership expert (there’s more to social capital beyond my Twitter follower count?), an accountant (I can’t defend that in an audit?), a finance strategist (a traunch? leveraged growth?), an employment lawyer (I can get sued for that?), an innovation consultant (innovation is a discipline, not just big ideas?).

I for one am exceedingly unimpressed by a consultant who asks me to be astonished at their stupid client. Yeah, I get that. They called you, right?

It’s much more fulfilling to have a conversation with someone who’s willing to share how they went about solving the problem. And maybe even admiring the client for calling them in the first place.

Albums - not just for the music.

I’ll say it: Effective participation in the social web is hard. Damn hard.

It requires strategic acumen more akin to leadership (valuing social capital and investing in the necessary competencies to build and leverage it) and execution skills more akin to in-person networking (add value to those you want to reach and do it all the time) than any kind of marketing and communications discipline.

It isn’t free. It isn’t fast. And the worst time to build your social web presence is at the beginning of a campaign, a crisis, or any other time when you want to broadcast and promote.

It’s exactly the same as this truism: The worst time to build a real-life network is when you want a job. Or a sale. Or anything at all. Social systems sniff out those who are out for themselves. They can detect them like a gas leak. And they’ll leave your house posthaste.

So how do you demonstrate the value of the social web in a culture with competing priorities?

Make no mistake about it: Building an effective social web presence is big change in many organizations. It’s hard work to change a culture into one that values online time to listen, converse, and add value for free. It’s also hard to make the kind of sustainable change necessary to do it again and again and all the time.

It’s a cultural issue as much, if not more, than an execution issue. The questions that need to be asked aren’t tactical: What Shall We Tweet or What Shall We Post. They’re strategic: How Shall We Connect and What Shall We Give Away.

For many, that’s a big cultural change that represents a disciplined approach to something very new.

Culture of Discipline: Disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action — operating with freedom within a framework of responsibilities — this is the cornerstone of a culture that creates greatness.

- Jim Collins, Good to Great. Stage 3 Input Principle

So it’s best to find small wins when developing a social web presence, and build on it (yes, another leadership principle.) Have a grandiose goal, but start by finding a purpose that adds value to your organization and build on small wins. This is a sustainable approach based on your strategic context.

It seems to me that one of the most potent small wins for an enterprise lies in the very nature of social web itself: You can use the social web to connect. Forget forward facing campaigns, forget ROI. Use it to connect to people doing stuff in your space, and learn.

We forget about this, I think. But it can be just the toe-hold into the social web that enterprises can use to demonstrate value and build upon.

Boil it down even further than large-scale listening. Approach it simply. Like we use album liner notes.

Remember albums? Time was that we’d buy an entire collection of music from an artist who caught our attention via a single song. The album would include liner notes about other projects the supporting musicians, producers, engineers, or others had been involved with. We’d read these liner notes, and we’d buy another album based on what we learned from them. This process would branch us into all kinds of related but ever-growing experiences.

Follow your favorite author, journalist, CEO, or idea person on Twitter (you’ll be surprised who you’ll find on Twitter using Google). Watch those people’s re-tweets, then follow the people attributed. Watch their links (the things they’re finding value in) and subscribe to those blogs. Follow the links in those blogs and subscribe to those podcasts. Start small and manageable, and before you know it you’ll be sending company-wide emails with a relevant piece of industry news, competitive intelligence, or inspirational thinking.

At a former job I used to send out weekly internal email blasts called “Competitive Flash Reports.” It was a simple thing with blurbs and links to relevant industry and competitive news. It became very popular. People referenced bits of information from it in all kinds of meetings and planning sessions. If the social web was around then, it would have served as a veritable advertisement for the power of the social web. If I did it today, I’d put the source (or source-of-the-source) with the blurb. Demonstrating the social web’s value in this way could change the conversation from “I don’t care what people are having for breakfast” into something meaningful.

Small win. Value to the enterprise. Building blocks based on your strategic context.

I wanted to point people to this one in particular because (a) I love it, and (b) I agree. Big kudos to you, Maureen Johnson. (And you should have whispered it, btw.) We are not brands. We are, indeed, weird. And layered. And multitudinous.

I’m actually working through a brand platform for a client that pivots around an eclectic, multi-layered experience. I turn to New Belgium Brewery as a model for this – a great brand that captures their layered experience. It can be done.

But people aren’t experiences. We experience. People aren’t work. We work.

And people aren’t results. People aren’t products. People aren’t services. We make, and yes, brand those things.

Is branding really worth saving?

Branding (not product branding, but that enterprise-level notion of name and reputation we’re still wrestling with) is dying because we’ve run it into the ground. If you asked anyone or anything to wear as many hats, mean as many things, or be a placeholder for so many musings as contradictory (think tactics promoted as strategy), impertinent (think one-size-fits-all-contexts theories), and importance-inflated (the genocide in Rwanda is an element of a brand? Really?) as we ask of branding, it’d die too. From sheer exhaustion.

It’s not the years (to paraphrase Indiana Jones). It’s the mileage.

Branding started as a notion of something you could control. If you had the resources to overcome the complexity of making fires and casting iron, you could mark something with a fair degree of inspiration, but without much thought of listening to anyone else’s opinion on the matter. Here it is. Our brand.

Branding today is obviously different. So much so that it’s sort of turned inside of itself. It’s lost its way. What branding has become in the last five years or so is actually a re-brand of good leadership practices. Let me make that case.

A brand, in my view, is a set of coordinated activities that facilitate the telling of a story, all pivoting around a clear understanding of what that story is, intended to inspire action.

An enterprise story is deeply contextual within its prime function and those of the stakeholders engaged with it (strategy). The story drive decisions about choosing the most effective ways to facilitate the telling of it (tactics).

And especially in today’s social, connected world where the audience is also the producer (”the former audience” as Jay Rosen put it) a brand must inspire a shared vision. Not the other way around. Which means an enterprise must find ways to listen to stakeholders and understand their values, align those values with the enterprise’s, and steadfastly communicate that their vision is in fact shared.

Agree with that? Then you agree with crusty old leadership concepts like those of Kouzes and Posner, Jim Collins, James O’Toole, and John Kotter. These concepts aren’t so crusty anymore. They’re more relevant than ever as it turns out. These guys were ahead of their time you could argue.

(By the way: Those activities – the work of strategy and tactic planning – are the work of groups of people within enterprises and groups of people outside it who have an interest in the outcome. When individual people do this, they aren’t engaged in personal branding. There’s no such thing. They’re expressing, as the always spot-on Doc Searls put it, their humanity and integrity.)

I’ve been playing around with the notion that brand management in our social world requires more leadership acumen than any kind of marketing smarts. What’s required is the ability listen, understand values, align values, and demonstrate that alignment to inspire a shared vision.

Hardly the work of art-and-copy alone. Yes, engaging content is critical. But where will your enterprise find the capacity to understand what is engaging without the ability to listen, understand values, and recognize what it will take to inspire action based on those values?

There are parallels all over the leadership corpora that illustrate this. Here’s one slide from a presentation I give on this topic:

In the context of today’s social world, a brand passes through several passages of maturity. It starts as adding value to a single type of person (or market segment, if you must). Once this is achieved, it transitions to adding value to many different kinds of people. Which is nice, but things really start popping when you inspire people to recommend it or remark about it. From there, a truly mature brand starts to set a standard in its space: it generates copycats and tail-riders. The most mature brands then transition into system-shifting movements – something that creates a new way of doing things.

A clear example of this is Flickr. Flickr started as a simple feature within a game in response to users who wanted to share photos while playing. As this feature matured into a clear value to many, the game was scrapped altogether. People started talking about it, signing up, and asking their friends and family do the same. It became clear that shutter-heads were highly social (who takes a picture for no one to see?) so it grew. Before long, as Flickr’s social capital grew, its ability to tag images became a standard for image sharing and organizing on the web.

And now? If you believe people like Clay Shirky, Flickr has fundamentally changed the way we store and access information, shifted our thinking in terms of how we wish to be informed as a society, and even disrupted traditional theories of institutions vs. collaboration.

Agree with this model? Then you agree with Ram Charan and his model of leadership maturity.

Today, branding is about how we inspire and intervene in our social networks – leveraging our social capital. That’s a leadership issue more than a marketing one.

It’s social capital that matters — an area of constant concern for any leader since the beginning of time. It isn’t about content capital.

Branding is leadership.

There are new bedfellows in the world of communications.

I had an interesting week of facilitating workshops and guest lecturing. Standing in front of people and trying to add value – acting like (as my late uncle used to say) I knew what I was doing.

Two key takeaways from the week of acting like I knew what I was doing:

People know this stuff. Let them uncover it.

I co-facilitated workshops on creating a communications plan for a leadership summit of some 200 people. The context of this group is one of tackling an enormous, multi-year endeavor with a dizzying landscape of stakeholders – deep government involvement, private industry engagement, for- and non-profit group alignment, complex technology requirements, countless values competing, and all within an industry in the midst of very real disruption.

In a world where the web is social (thus communications to inspire action and change is all about building trust) the summit was a powerful reminder that much of what we’re dealing with is actually common sense. Appealing to the audience’s intuition of developing relationships and the kind of leadership acumen it takes to succeed in today’s interconnected world was surprisingly straight-forward.

Ask a few questions, get a few folks to share an experience or two and you’re on you’re way to inspiring a shared learning moment. Much more effective than imposing something outside of their context.

This is also how we built our template for a communications plan: we let the members of the audience who’ve done this work before share their best practices. Then we continued to share the peer-developed plan template and best practices throughout the day. I think it was much more effective than if we had stood up there and tried to decree something.

When I guest lectured a few days later, I did the exact opposite. I made assumptions about the audience from past experiences in similar settings. Then I promptly preached.

About a third of the way through, when I sensed some disengagement, it occurred to me that I never polled the audience to better understand their level of understanding (head slap). And it was difficult to recover.

Why didn’t I apply what I know to be true and effective for the guest lecture engagement, especially after I saw it work so well in the workshop setting a few days before? Dunno. I had some new speaker-support stuff that I was excited to show. Maybe that exuberance (hubris?) led me astray. But the difference was clear.

Surround yourself with smart people who don’t do exactly what you do.

I co-facilitated the workshops with Judah Thornewill. A brilliant guy (and fellow creative-mind, frustrated musician). He’s one of those rare combinations of researcher and professional-world doer who has some exciting things to offer in the domain of social capital. He’s developed a method for measuring social capital and collaboration, and he’ll doubtless set the world on fire with his new entrepreneurial effort. His time is now, I’m convinced.

The time is clearly upon us to better understand social capital now that the way we connect and communicate is social. There’s plenty of work on this subject already in the milieu. Chapters are dedicated in just about every leadership book. And there are leaders and their books that focus on the topic exclusively like Bowling Alone, The Hidden Power of Social Networks, The Whuffle Factor, and Connected to name a few (Nicholas Christakis actually spoke earlier at the event – a brilliant mind who’s time has also obviously come).

As communicators, we need to understand how to intervene in the construction of social networks like never before. This is not a branding, marketing, or communications issue. It’s a systems thinking issue. It’s a leadership issue. If marketing people are able to adapt to our new-world reality, people like Judah and Nicholas will be key to our understanding of this new landscape.

Take market segmentation as an easy example. It’s almost intuitive that our social networks affect behavior. But Judah and Nicholas convincingly demonstrate that the way a network is constructed truly matters. This, without hyperbole, redefines market segmentation. It presents a much more complex challenge than what we believe to be true about distinctiveness, homogeneity, response to market stimulus, and reach-ability.

It so happens that my new friend Judah has a market segmentation background. He’s combining this experience with his work on measuring social networks and collaboration effectiveness. He’s the perfect example of the kinds of minds that need to lead marketing and communications professionals today. He broadened my thinking, to be sure.

Judah also demonstrated the kind of leadership style that is called for in our social times during our facilitation: he knew when to pull back, support, and jump in to comment or get us back on track at just the right time. Our workshops were better for it. He kept me from rolling too fast downhill as I’m sometimes apt to do.

The guest lecture? I went it alone. Lectured. Spoke. Presented. I rarely connected and too infrequently looked for the peers in the group to help create a shared sense of learning. I don’t think it was a bad experience overall, but it wasn’t great.

Now that our world is connected and social, the degree to which we can communicate effectively within it depends on understanding its social constructs. Collaboration rules. How we build and intervene in networks is paramount.

And winging it alone simply won’t cut it.

Lesson learned: Facilitate learning. And do it with great people.

But what stood out was his reminder that “people want to play in the fun sandbox.” That sustainable solutions to business and our world should be joyful. Think of the innovation that’s going on in this space, he challenged us. The amazing technology. System-changing ideas. Massive shifts in the status quo. The wondrous problems about to be solved. The human spirit and joy behind it all.

If those interested in sustainable development focus on the doom-and-gloom, the catastrophic problems looming ahead, who will want to play with us?

An excellent thing to remember when managing a brand. Collaboration, partnerships, and action happen when it’s exciting to be a part of something. It’s something I learned a long time ago during college when I worked for an environmental group. People want to be a part of something that’s working, that they feel is making a difference, and is solving something as opposed to bringing attention to a problem.

Same in business and the brands and leadership tactics we use to mobilize people. And not just in the creative, messaging-driven myopia that we often associate with branding and leading. Think of the left side of the brain, too. What can be measured can be managed, obviously. But data and demonstrable results also demonstrate momentum. Momentum begets engagement. Engagement: collaboration, partnerships, change.

And if you don’t have the data right away to demonstrate forward movement, turn to the right brainers for help. If you don’t have data, you’ve got a story. Work on your story from the very beginning. And then when you do gather the data? Aw yeah.

Like the artwork around its vats, the New Belgium brand is made up of many individual parts, while well considered and considerately crafted.

Craft beer on a Wednesday afternoon. One of the perks of working for yourself.

OK, so we didn’t drink beer. But a prospective client and I spent the better part of the day visiting the New Belgium brewery in Ft. Collins, Colorado yesterday. I’m recommending some branding initiatives for this prospective client, and New Belgium provides an excellent analog to what we’re after. (We’ll see where it goes.)

The New Belgium brand is special on many fronts. But one dynamic we saw first-hand stuck out above all the others.

If you haven’t heard about the New Belgium approach to running a business – and their branding work that seamlessly integrates with it – you owe it to yourself to check it out. Writings and studies are all over the place. Here’s a more academically-minded one (PDF – © O.C. Ferrell 2006), here’s a local b-school video, and here’s a nice write-up from Elephant Journal.

I’ve been to the brewery before but with friends. I’ve had to constantly control my urge to be the wet-blanket marketing weenie among these fun-seeking groups that aren’t the least bit interested in things like holistic, values-based, integrated branding. So it was refreshing to be there purely to experience New Belgium from a business perspective.

We arrived around 11:00. We were just about the only non-employees meandering about. We interrupted someone working on a laptop behind the bar in the Liquid Center (New Belgium’s remarkable name for the tasting room) and asked if we could see a certain area of the brewery I had remembered as particularly impressive during a past tour.

Tours start at 1:30, he said. We looked at each other, trying to decide if we had the time to come back and if it was worth it. We did this because like most consumers we’ve been conditioned to accept policies, and we’ve been further conditioned to understand that employees at this level aren’t empowered to work outside them.

Instead, our man in the Liquid Center took advantage of his moment of truth: I can’t leave the bar unattended, but let me see if anyone’s available to take you.

A few minutes later we were immersed in a conversation with Andrew Lemley about the company and its brand. Not a tour-guide script of New Belgium beer, not why we should buy it. But responses to our questions. Things we were interested in.

Of all the impressive tactics New Belgium employs to build and manage a values-centric brand, the fact that an employee felt empowered to work outside the norm was the most remarkable.

At the end of our “tour” my prospective client pressed Andrew about his role in the company. You’re in sales, he said, you just don’t know it.

You’re right, Andrew responded. I sell an experience with a story.

Straight from his mouth, not a marketing professor or blogger.

Well-crafted beer and well-crafted branding on a Wednesday afternoon. One of the perks of working for yourself.

Have you ever experienced employees empowered to act outside their policies or job description? What kind of impact did it have on your perceptions of the brand you were experiencing? Did it cause you to act differently?