At a time of increasingly intense competition between cities and regions for talent, funding and resources, a broad consortium of companies and organizations representing the Toledo Region has adopted a platform communicating the region’s unique appeal from an economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism perspective. Applied Storytelling led the ten-month initiative.

“For those of us who have a stake in this region’s well-being, its strengths have always been clear,” says Joe Napoli, President & General Manager of the Toledo Mud Hens and a member of the Toledo Region Committee. “Until now, however, we literally haven’t been on the same page in communicating those strengths. Now we have the ability to do so.”

A consortium committed to adoption

The newly defined regional brand was introduced to local media and a group of more than 100 business leaders and local media on June 16. The committee is currently developing a plan for large-scale implementation. Significantly, each of the committee member organizations has committed to integrating key messages of the brand platform into their own communications.

Adopting a best practices approach

As part of the development effort, Applied Storytelling conducted a series of six community forums throughout the region, convened six work sessions with regional opinion leaders and conducted a public survey that generated several hundred responses. At the same time, Toledo-based Great Lakes Marketing conducted a research effort geared to gathering opinion and insight from more than 100 regional business leaders.

“From the outset, the committee was committed to pursuing a best practices approach,” says Dave Nolan, President of Destination Toledo, the region’s tourism and convention marketing organization, who convened the committee in early 2009. “We knew that the keys to widespread adoption and long-term success rested in an effort that was as inclusive and transparent as possible.”

The communications platform developed by Applied Storytelling included distinct positionings, messages and storylines for economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism, with economic development identified as the lead component of the region’s overall brand story

“On one hand, the region will benefit from a cohesive story that is emotionally engaging and easy to understand,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “On the other, the days of one-size-fits all messaging to serve the many agendas of an entity as complex and diverse as an entire region are long gone.”

Competitive research validated the committee’s decision to focus overall brand positioning around leadership in the New Manufacturing Economy—manufacturing enabled by digital technologies, sophisticated systems and processes, and a highly-trained workforce. In addition to being highly differentiating, the clarity and sharp definition of this positioning reflect a level of brand discipline that relatively few regions have been able to achieve.

Creating an open, accessible content hub

The Toledo Region brand platform will be placed on the initiative’s initial web site together with other background materials. Initial implementation plans call for developing a robust site as a dynamic communications hub and content-rich resource for any individual or organization seeking to integrate the region’s story into their own brand marketing initiatives.

Genoptix Medical Laboratories, a specialized laboratory diagnostics company focused on delivering personalized, comprehensive assessments to community-based hematologists and oncologists, has released its first bundled set of evaluations for solid tumors under the NexCourse™ name.

According to a company spokesman, the new solid tumor offering will play a significant role in the Genoptix’s goal of expanding its customer outreach in 2010.

The company turned to Applied Storytelling to develop a comprehensive brand messaging and naming framework that included the new name.

“Like many companies, Genoptix reached a point where an organic, one-off approach to product naming would no longer suffice,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling.

“The new offering needed to be seen not only as important in its own right but also as part of a meaningful system—and an overall business strategy.”

Supplemented by external insights from Frymire & Associates (Menlo Park, CA), Applied Storytelling worked with a cross-section of company’s C-level executives and departmental leads to arrive at a new product naming and messaging solution. To succeed, the company needed to maintain the loyalty of its existing customer base as it reached out to a broader array of oncologists.

“In the oncology diagnostics space, as in so many other categories of service business, the pressures towards commoditization are tremendous,” says Matthew Kruchko, Managing Director of Applied Storytelling. “Those pressures can increase even further as a company diversifies its offering.”

In the life or death battle between diversification and commoditization, companies must often find ways to port their brand’s core strengths into their new offerings, Kruchko adds. Carefully considered messages, together with a compelling, credible, brand story, can play a vital role in making this translation possible.

Winner of best-of-show at CES 2010, Spring Design’s Alex Reader has a lot going for it: It’s the only dual screen reader based on Google’s Android platform to fully integrate web browsing and reading. From the outset, it gives readers access to over one million Google books. And it will be heavily promoted in the US through Borders.

Of course, Alex needs a lot going for it, too. While hardly mature, the eReader marketplace now features entries from all of the major players, with several lesser-known contenders weighing in as well.

Heading the new reader’s brand, name and identity development, San José, California-based Liquid Agency engaged longtime collaborator Applied Storytelling to provide the messaging framework to support the eReader at launch.

Beyond individual messages building on the eReader’s distinctive features and benefits, Applied Storytelling also crafted a Real Reader Credo, which begins with the premise of “reading unlimited” and states a belief “in the power of the curious mind unfettered.”

Sample headlines and copy concepts, a common feature of Applied Storytelling messaging deliverables, also gave a boost to pre-launch creative.

Seeking “to revitalize and expand…so that it may live up to its potential as the region’s indispensable hub for connecting people and nature”, the Natural History Museum has embarked on a capital campaign to re-imagine key exhibits, restore landmark architectural features and inspire visitors and others to make deeper and more meaningful connections to a changing world.

Teaming with Los Angeles-based KBDA, which developed the museum’s overall brand platform in 2008, Applied Storytelling first developed the campaign’s communications framework and has since gone on to collaborate on communications geared to securing contributors as well as inspiring the public. These have included concept development and writing for an overview video that first aired in August on the museum’s YouTube channel as well as an awareness campaign displayed throughout the museum itself. Additional communications are forthcoming.

The public will begin to see the first enhancements to the museum made possible by the campaign later this year, with the effort slated for completion by 2013.

The museum’s NHMNext fundraising initiative comes at a time when charitable giving to cultural institutions has declined, a casualty of the current economic downturn. More broadly, museums are asking hard questions about how to remain compelling, vital institutions in an increasingly media-driven and digital landscape. In this landscape, a strategic approach to communications becomes even more vital to a campaign's success.

“Ultimately, the museum experience itself must engage many different types of visitor who come to the museum for many different reasons,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “But the campaign story has a vital role to play in exciting the imagination—and, to donors, communicating lasting value—long before that experience takes shape.”

Guided by criteria established at the assignment’s outset, the campaign messaging framework builds on the museum’s own overall mission and strategic plan. Messaging elements include a campaign vision, mission and promise as well as supporting value propositions and a call to action. Applied Storytelling also developed the NHM Next campaign name and Join the evolution slogan.

Established in Mexico in 2002, Evolutiva quickly secured a place as one of the top firms in its profession. It could claim plenty of successes serving some of the biggest companies in Mexico and Latin America. To continue to grow, however, founder Janice Muñiz and her team knew they would need to refine their image and story to set themselves apart in a relatively undeveloped and under-served market.

In short, Evolutiva faced a classic triple challenge: building awareness for a new type of service, presenting a distinctive approach to that service, and then generating interest in the firm itself.

To address this challenge at a time of heightened exposure, Evolutiva turned to Mexico City-based BLOK Design for a new visual identity, and to Applied Storytelling for a compelling brand story and marketing messages to be integrated into a wide range of touchpoints.

The highly personal nature of Evolutiva’s approach lent itself to a highly distinctive verbal brand that referenced folk tales and teaching stories from the world’s wisdom traditions.

Today, despite a challenging economic environment, Evolutiva is thriving: Its transformational value to business leaders is clear.

Applied Storytelling has helped a growing number of specialized professional services firms to strengthen their presence in this climate of change. Look for their stories as they launch and reintroduce themselves to their customers in the weeks and months to come.

Qualcomm’s Plaza Retail mobile internet solution is among the new offerings and initiatives the telecom leader is showcasing at the world’s largest mobile industry gathering, held in Barcelona February 16-19.

Qualcomm first announced Plaza Retail, a “new end-to-end widget framework that will allow operators to drive use of the mobile Internet” last May and released a series of teaser videos about the service on YouTube in late 2008. Qualcomm envisions Plaza Retail as an easy-to-implement, platform-neutral alternative to competitive offerings from Nokia, Yahoo and Apple via the iPhone.

Working with San Diego-based MiresBall, Applied Storytelling provided an array of messaging tools and written communications to support Plaza’s launch, beginning with the name of the service itself. Early on, the effort also included the development of clear, simple messages targeted to operators, publishers and device manufacturers. To develop these messages, Applied Storytelling worked not only with Plaza Retail stakeholders but also conducted a systematic review of competitors’ communications.

MiresBall has led Plaza’s overall brand expression, beginning with the Plaza Retail identity and extending to ads, videos and marketing collateral. The current initiative to support Plaza builds on extensive mobile communications expertise the two firms have developed over the past several years, working closely with Qualcomm and others.

In the young but rapidly growing executive concierge industry, most leading players are focused on the rapid scaling and diversification of services. Beverly Hills-based Mint has opted for a different path: an intensive focus on performance and individual consideration.

In terms of operations, this focus has led Mint to build the infrastructure, grow the talent and foster the service culture that will support stable, ongoing growth as well as to cement the loyalty of existing members.

At the same time, Mint has strived to strengthen the way it engages with members, underscoring its distinctive approach and providing a clearer picture of the services it offers and the many ways members can make use of them.

Engaged by Mint to define its point of difference and tell its story in a crisp and compelling way, Applied Storytelling first worked with company founders and key staff members to understand the company’s own unique culture. Afterwards, the Applied Storytelling team worked directly with members to understand their specific, and surprisingly diverse, needs and preferences.

In addition to brand positioning, personality and promise fundamentals, Applied Storytelling developed a simple, streamlined system for organizing and presenting member services. Applied Storytelling also recommended a number of new tools and channels for reaching out to members.

Brand insights have informed everything from the company’s new web site, member materials and client and partner presentations to a companywide employee training program.

"Our brand development initiative has been instrumental in helping us to develop a stronger and more focused membership development effort,” says Mint co-founder Gordon MacGeachy, “as well as to achieve a stronger market position among partners and member development prospects.”

“Additionally,” he notes, “the effort has set the stage for an enhanced sense of pride and value among our employees."

In a company release, CEO Julia Stewart summarizes the thinking behind the new name and tagline: "The acquisition of Applebee's required that we select a name for our company that reflects our company's core competencies and recognizes our ownership of multiple brands, and DineEquity does just that," she says. "Further, DineEquity's tagline 'Great Franchisees. Great Brands.' prominently identifies two of the most important contributors to our success. With Applebee's and IHOP, we have brought together two great brands, and we are beginning to demonstrate how we are more successful together than we could ever have been apart. Our name change to DineEquity reflects the promise of our newly combined company."

For most consumers, DineEquity is likely to remain a background presence at most. Culminating in the name and tagline, the new brand development effort is geared to quickly convey the company’s core strengths to financial audiences and franchisees.

In addition to laying a long-term foundation for Arena’s communications, Applied Storytelling and MiresBall helped Arena with a much more time-sensitive challenge: creating a compelling way to talk about the theater’s 2008-9 and 2009-10 seasons, which will take place in temporary venues far from Arena’s original (and future) location. This effort resulted in Arena Restaged: a two year festival of American Voices, a distinctive positioning and identity for a singular moment in the theater’s history.

MiresBall has served as Arena Stage’s brand design consultant of record for more than a decade, bringing a distinct visual presence to every season, and creating an immediately recognizable tone and manner across the sum of Arena’s communications. In 2006, this effort extended to a concept and identity for Arena’s successful capital campaign effort, the most ambitious for a regional theater to date. Applied Storytelling has supported these efforts with powerful messages, themes and ideas. Today, taking a longer view of how it connects with subscribers and audiences than a season-by-season approach allows, Arena Stage stands to remain at the forefront of regional theaters in yet one more new way.

Allergan, a global leader in several pharmaceutical categories, has grown and diversified in recent years. As it has done so, the company has felt an intensifying need to articulate what it does and why it does it in a simple and distinctive way.

Allergan’s corporate brand initiative began in earnest with the company's 2006 annual report. In early 2007, Applied Storytelling joined Santa Monica, California-based Baker Brand Communications in developing an updated brand platform for Allergan. Scope of the platform extended to positioning, brand personality targeted messaging and array of additional tools and insights. The effort culminated in the public introduction of its new tagline and mission early this year.

In addition to playing a key role in tagline and vision statement development, Applied Storytelling provided messaging insight for the company’s new web site and wrote key sections of its award-winning 2007 annual report. (See also Going Live, September 2007.)

Companywide introduction of Allergan’s new tagline and mission statement followed a December 2007 preview to director- and executive-level management. Insight, the company’s magazine, reports an enthusiastic worldwide response.

At a time when Qualcomm’s BREW wireless services brand is expanding in scope, reach and capabilities at an accelerated rate, Applied Storytelling has developed a conference theme to match. “Into the New” is the watchword and hallmark of the BREW 2007 global conference—and the driver of a bold identity developed by San Diego-based MiresBall. The conference, slated for June 20-22 in San Diego, will attract some 2,500 developers, operators, manufacturers and brand marketers from around the world.

In collaboration with MiresBall, Applied Storytelling has helped to shape and define the BREW brand since its launch in 2001. Applied Storytelling has been responsible developing the BREW brand architecture and articulating the BREW brand story — not just once but through two follow-on iterations as BREW has responded to fast-paced changes in the global wireless services marketplace. Applied Storytelling has also provided naming as well as a communications and identity foundation for a number of BREW Signature Solutions as well, including BREW Gaming and its tagline— The game has changed™—as well as its sticky, high-profile “Broogs” mascot.

For sheer lameness, nothing trumps a “Coming Soon” placeholder page for a design firm that’s undergoing some kind of a makeover. We’ve noted a few of these lately. Not even a single, high-level message to help us understand what the firm does! With every day, the damnation deepens. (What is “soon”, anyway?) Our advice to clients considering such a firm for brand marketing services: Move on.

For sheer lameness, we’ve encountered only one thing that trumps this: the fairly sizable Detroit-based ad agency that has no web site whatsoever.

Incredibly, confusion still reigns about these building blocks of brand expression—so much so that some practitioners even consider them to be one and the same. We certainly don’t, though we acknowledge a close relationship between the two. Here’s how we explain the difference—and define the two terms—in the simplest, most rule-of-thumb way:

Imagine that a product or service could speak. The first sentence it says is, “Choose me because___________.” That because is the positioning. Of course, the product may have many reasons for you to choose it. The positioning will be the one it states first—the one if feels it must state in case it doesn’t get a chance to speak again.

Of course, you’re only going to choose the product if what it’s saying sets it apart in a uniquely compelling way from the clamor of other products asking you to choose them.

Now to the promise. The promise follows from the positioning. Suppose you like what the product is saying. You might then be prompted to respond, “Okay, let’s say I do. What’ll you do for me if I choose you?” The answer, that’s the promise: “Choose me and [I’ll help you to] __________.”

As long as the answer to the sentence is clear, confident, distinctive and relevant, chances are you have a good promise. We arrived at this insight after causing a bit of a debate among the various members of a project team. They were trying to arrive at a normative definition of a promise. They felt they needed to because the candidate we provided was pithy to the point of being catchy—too much so for their liking. At issue was whether a promise so snappy could actually be a promise. The catchiness, we explained, was incidental. The meaning was what mattered. We understood the different between a promise and a slogan. And no, we weren’t suggesting our promise as a slogan. If, however, they accepted it as such, would it have really been such a bad thing? Maybe not, as long as they could say why.

We’re not in a position to share our subversive promise yet, but here’s a good stand-in for coming to your own conclusions: Just do it.

How gratifying to read about the early, great industrial design consultant in Henry Petroski’s The Evolution of Useful Things.

First, of course, Loewy was an early proponent of the argument that good design sells. Few have argued more convincingly since.

Better still, he was a champion of the idea that integrated design sells. By no means did he limit himself to products themselves: His assignments extended to packaging and even messages.

Loewy might also be the grandfather of experience design itself: Petroski recounts how in 1927 Loewy was invited by Henry Saks to appraise the layout of a new, uptown branch of the famous Manhattan department store. Loewy did that and more, commenting as well on the conduct of staff and their role in the customer experience, the design of store graphics, a unified advertising campaign and so on.

In this regard, he's the direct forerunner of the discipline we practice today.

It’s the same in brandland as in so many other areas of endeavor: collectivity rules. Alliances and networks of small, highly specialized firms can deliver thinking and programs every bit as powerful, if not more so, than the so-called “full service” firms. In our experience (and that of others like us), clients appreciate the honesty and transparency of knowing who, exactly, is doing the work, and where, exactly, the competency lies. They also appreciate the lack of conflicting agendas between, say, Strategy and Design.

On one hand, a “full-service” firm generally touts the benefits of its “integrated model”. On the other, a narrowly-focused “networked alliance” firm (like us) will tout the “best in class” expertise of its allies and friends. We’ve got a stake in this argument, and we believe we’re on the winning side of it (at least, most of the time). But we also know that the “networked alliance” model is relatively new—at least, as a business model that’s been outed and is now publicly okay to embrace. Like all new models, it’s still got some kinks to work out. A few of these are: What are the right rules of the road for working together? Who owns the client relationship? Who should manage the project? And so on.

After dozens of engagements, we’ve arrived at the following etiquette, more or less. We share it as a window into the way we build teams (and collaborative relationships) and as a starting point for further conversations elsewhere. We share it as a way we like to be considered, and the way we like to consider others in turn. Please forgive the lapses into legalese.

If you don’t want to get into details, we can summarize the etiquette with five simple principles:

1. Every firm on the team represents itself as itself.

2. Every firm on the team is acknowledged as the author of its own work.

3. Every firm on the team presents its own work.

4. Every firm on the team enjoys direct communications with the client with respect to its own work.

5. All team members will respect the firm that owns the relationship while retaining responsibility for their own work.

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Invitation to Co-Present to a New Prospective Client with a Professional Services Collaborator

When we present with a collaborator on a new business pitch, we represent our company, processes and work, as our own (in our case, “Applied Storytelling”).

In acknowledgement of our collaborator partner as the "lead collaborator" from a business development standpoint, we allow our collaborator partner to determine the time and place of the presentation, and to be the sole point of contact with the client prospect with regard to matters relating to the presentation.

Request for Proposal: If the team is asked to provide a proposal that includes the services we offer, we consider that we have helped to win the business and expect to benefit in a manner commensurate with our efforts. Namely, we do not consider our collaborator partner to be our "client". Our obligations to our collaborator partner differ significantly from our individual and joint obligations to the client.

Obligation to Collaborator: If the prospect has originally contacted our collaborator partner, then we regard the prospect as having the potential to become the collaborator's client. We absolutely respect our team member’s right to "own the relationship" with the client outside the specific scope of services that we provide. Any recommendation or request for services that we receive, and that falls outside the services we offer directly, will be referred by us to our lead collaborator partner.

We extend and abide by the same considerations we expect of our fellow team members.

Proposals: We provide our own proposal and pricing for any brand consulting and naming services we are asked to provide.

If we are presenting at the invitation of a collaborator, we gladly provide our proposal to the collaborator to be packaged with the collaborator's own proposal, providing the collaborator responds to the client within a reasonable timeframe. In such circumstances, we expect that our proposal will be presented intact as delivered to the collaborator, regardless of any cover letter or "wrap" the collaborator might wish to add. Our collaborative partner agrees not to amend or revise our proposal in any way without our express knowledge and consent.

In the case of a referral from a collaborator (versus a co-presentation), we expect to submit our own proposal directly to the prospective client. On occasion, a referring firm will ask for a finder's fee if we win the business. We may agree to such a fee beforehand. As a rule, we make referrals freely, as do our closest professional services allies.

Communications: We copy our professional services collaborator on all written communications and apprise our collaborative team member of all meetings and presentations we will be making to perform the services detailed in the scope of work. We expect that our collaborative partner will not communicate directly with the client regarding our services without our express knowledge and consent.

We actively seek to represent and recommend our collaborator partners at every opportunity as well as to coordinate our workflows and deliverables to strengthen their own work products and client relationships.

Project Management: We expect to manage the project(s) for which we are engaged to provide services. We freely inform our collaborator partners of the steps and approach we are taking, and we may solicit opinions from them, but we remain the sole authority and decision maker with respect to the process, steps, tools and people we use to perform the services for which we are engaged.

Billing: In line with the project management we provide for the work we perform, we establish direct billing with the client.

Representation of Work: We represent our work as our own. Our work is not co-branded with our collaborator partners.

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Invitation to Co-Present with a Professional Services Firm Collaborator to an Established Client

Certain distinctions between this situation and the previous situation apply:

Billing: Provided the collaborator partner has a history of timely payment with us, we allow our billing to be run through the collaborator partner. Note, however, that we retain control of project management for services provided.

Representation of Work: We allow our lead collaborator partners to repackage our work in their own format provided our work does not materially change without our express knowledge and consent, and provided that any reformatting does not materially effect project steps and timing. We consent to our work being co-branded with our collaborator partner’s, if desired by the partner.

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Request for Services from a Professional Services Firm that Will Be Incorporating these Services into its Own Client Deliverable

Additional distinctions between this situation and the previous situations apply:

Billing: Provided the collaborator partner has a history of timely payment with us, we may consent to run our billing through the collaborator partner.

Communications: To be successful, we must hear the client's voice directly. We agree not to contact the end client without the participation of our collaborator partner—who is, after all, our fellow team member. At the same time, our professional services collaborator agrees to include us on all phone calls of substance relating to our work product, and agrees to allow us to take the lead in presenting the deliverables we develop. Our collaborator/client further agrees to send no deliverable provided by us to the end client "over the transom" (i.e., without a presentation or walk-through to the client) without our express knowledge and consent.

Representation of Work: We allow our professional services collaborators/clients to repackage our work in their own format provided our work does not materially change, and provided that reformatting does not materially effect project steps and timing. We consent to our work being co-branded with our collaborator partner, if the partner desires. We never allow a professional services collaborator/client to represent our work as its own without our express knowledge and consent.

Project Management: We acknowledge the professional services firm as our client, and perform services under their project management lead as set forth in our working agreement with them.

It’s one thing consciously to create names and taglines that meet the client’s needs. It’s another to recognize an asset in the midst of what the client already has, or when the client stumbles upon it, or in a passing bit of conversation. It’s a sign that you’ve created the right kind of work atmosphere, and that you’re truly attuned to the assignment. I think of these as “assists”, and they make me every bit as happy as a solution by any other route.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles has just completed a major brand development effort guided by Kim Baer, a wonderful graphic designer who has developed great skill as a strategist. Now we’re working together on a new capital campaign for the museum. In the midst of developing the campaign messages, Jane Pisano, the museum’s president, emails a thought that came to her while in yoga class. The short phrase she sends doesn’t really fit into the campaign effort. It will, however, become the museum’s new tagline.

First of all, in higher education it is very difficult to get anyone to do anything. "Buy in" is always the key to success. Although buy in is certainly important in the private sector, employees can be directed to behave and perform in a certain manner consistent with a branding program. If they refuse and the stakes are high enough (or their individual's value is low enough) they might lose their job. Higher education is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Faculty have tenure and hide behind academic freedom (mostly inappropriately), and staff have job rights that the average private sector employee doesn't have. On top of this, of course, are union contracts. Employees in higher education, regardless of job function, need to be inspired to support a branding initiative. They need to buy in to the proposition. Without that buy in they will perceive it in many negative ways including:

A) What a waste of money! Why couldn't the money spent on all this branding stuff gone into giving me a bigger pay raise or replacing my classroom equipment?

B) This is top down and I won't stand for it. Those folks in administration ("us and them" attitudes are prevalent) don't know the first thing about me, my program, and my students. This is all a bunch of BS.

C) Nobody asked me what I thought so it doesn't apply to me.

D) It's just one more passing fad. I've been here XX years (fill in the blank) and I've seen these things come and go. They never produce any results and there is always another new thing in a couple years. Why should I bother.

E) It's somebody else's job. I'm a teacher. I don't have to be concerned with all this branding crap and I don't have the time.

Of course the point they are missing is all this "branding crap", if done well, can help them keep their job, increase their salary, attract more and better students, increase their job satisfaction, and so on. To weave a successful branding campaign into the fabric of a college or university, there has got to be something in it for the employees, particularly the faculty. They have to want to do it. It has to be fun for them, not more work because they are already overworked and underpaid. It has to give them a sense of pride. It has to create a feeling of be left out for those who choose not to participate. They have to want to wear the embroidered shirts and put the stickers in the windows of their cars.

Paralleling this trend is the rise of ellipses as the preferred form of punctuation for closing a letter or other copy block! In this trend another blogmentator sees, “the promise of a continued connection between reader and writer, as well as a real sense of nexpectation and mystery!”

The last use of the semicolon is recorded in 2038…

I’m standing in the purchase line at Border’s, noting how the racks of last-minute impulse buy items seem to have multiplied over the past several months. The overall effect is distasteful: It lowers the tone of the store and clashes with our sense of “the Borders experience”. And yet, we yield to impulse (in this case, Burt’s Bees chapstick).

Seattle’s Best Coffee is among the items on offer. Cinnabon® is a featured flavor. For me, at least, there’s dissonance here, too: I’m now asked consider Cinnabon not as a, well, bun but as a flavor — a signature flavor.

Arriving home, we receive an email from my father-in-law, who is visiting Egypt in relation to a book he's writing on the Secrets of the Great Pyramid. He’s writing from Giza, where the Pyramid is located — and where he has just visited the local Cinnabon.

The marketized world in which we live is now beginning to get its due in literature. Here’s a starter course. If you’re in the business, you’ll appreciate the inside details that feel oh-so-right (and the places where the writers, who aren’t us, hit an off note). You might also read these as cautionary tales. I do.

Syrup, by Max Barry. Set in the world of soft drink marketing, it’s as much about how the two main characters, Scat and 6, market themselves to each other as it is about the marketing ideas they have. Chapters begin with fake marketing principles that get at the rudest, crudest side of what we do. Briskly paced, smartly timed — copywriting married to a keen eye, a sharp wit and a longer format.

Company, by Max Barry. Imagine a company that exists for the sole purpose of studying corporate behavior. Next, imagine working there without any knowledge of this higher purpose. Existential absurdity on the level of Kafka — but with all the immediacy of the everyday. A great, searing send-up of corporate culture.

Pastoralia, by George Saunders. The title story in this collection presents us with a theme park (Pastoralia) “in bad decline” — to borrow a phrase from another, related George Saunders story set in a theme park, Civil War Land in Bad Decline. For Saunders, the theme park is the world in miniature. So take this, then, as an exploration of “the themed life”— its sheer banality on one hand, its ability to overtake and ultimately degrade just about everything it touches on the other. Good, sobering reading for anyone involved in brand work for destinations.

In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders. The title couldn’t be more telling — right down to its gleanmean near-rhyme. Every single story is Swift for the Marketing Age. Two, in particular, stand out: In the title story, the “reality” of commercials is real for real. Characters live and die and live again in step with the commercials’ own mores and physical laws. In their endless suffering and horrific value system, of course, we see a reflection of who we are — which is to say, what we’ve become. An even sadder mirror, to me, exists in the story “93990”. It’s a story about a certain kind of blindness. Read it.

The Futurist, by James P. Othmer. At one time or another, you, too may have been referred to as a “guru” — as in “marketing guru”. At all costs, dispel the term and resist the temptation to wear the label. The same for its equally evil twin term “futurist”, and for similar reasons: both suggest super-ordinary powers of divination about the fundamentally and profanely unfathomable. Want a cautionary tale about someone who decides to go with the futurist flow? Here you are.

Read all of this, and reflect on the world you help to create, in light of Robert Grudin’s American Vulgar: The Politics of Manipulation versus The Culture of Awareness. Grudin sees a process — an agenda, almost — of vulgarization transforming America into a place of ill-informed, narrow-minded and uncouth individuals. The agents of vulgarization — an intellectual and social dumbing down — are politicians, advertisers, marketers and other exploiters of media. Are you contributing to this vulgarization willingly? Unwittingly? Do you see yourself as above it? Can you be above it — and if so, how and where? Can you serve as an agent of counter-vulgarization while still in the service of the marketplace? I am still asking these questions of myself. Grudin, by the way, is a lovely writer. His earlier book, Time and The Art of Living, is one I dip into often. On Alcatraz, prisoners were allowed a maximum of 12 books on the shelf of their cell. This would have been one of my 12, and it would have freed me.

Can you use brand principles to win popular support for the U.S. Military in theaters of operation? The RAND Corporation thinks so — and details how in a report commissioned by the United States Joint Forces Command. An excerpt of the report’s summary runs in this month’s Harper’s. [“Target Audience”, p. 21, November 2007] In classic Harper’s style, mere appearance in the magazine frames this document as patently absurd if not morally and aesthetically repugnant. Can you really equate consumers with civilians? Are we entering an age in which brand principles gloss over responsible policy — or pass for policy? Unsettling questions to consider. And yet I can’t help thinking, “In principle, if not in practical terms, and from a purely technical standpoint, the original premise might just be valid...”

How apt that the cover story of this issue has to do with the brandufacturing of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The article itself refers to “the task of reformulating and repackaging the Romney brand.” With every week, it seems, we see more and more of the world through a brand-centric lens.

Both stories emphasize brands as “manufactured realities” and posit their manufacture as dubious enterprises. To be sure, all stories are “manufactured realities”, but many have truth, either literal, psychological or poetic, at their core — and many of the “manufactured realities” we and others have helped to create have done a lot of good — much of it, yes, in the name of selling things.

The image of brand work is itself in need of brand work.

Set aside, for now, other facets of Foote Cone & Belding’s new brand-building initiative for Hilton, many of them highly commendable, to consider Hilton’s new tagline: Be hospitable.

Very problematic.

First, there’s the question of who’s being addressed. Me, the customer? Why should I be hospitable? Isn’t that your job, Hilton? The second person form doesn’t work here the way, say, Nike’s timeless Just do it does. It’s one thing to be enjoined to do something, another to be told to besomething.

Part of the problem arises, I think, from the conflation of hospitableness, always understood as a virtue, and hospitality, understood here as the business category in which Hilton competes.

Or, Hilton, are you letting us in on your own inner mantra — that which lives at your core, that which you value most? If so, why are you talking to yourself? Do you need this constant reminder? Seems like this tagline might be better suited to an employee-focused effort.

Then there’s the question of exactly what Hilton means by "Be hospitable" in the first place. Of course, if you read the one-page statement that accompanies the corporate image ad itself, you understand a number of very real and very good things that Hilton is doing in the spirit of being hospitable: helping to educate children, focusing on music education, working to save U.S. landmarks and encouraging support for the homeless. All very relevant endeavors that help to explain the tagline. [To really dive in, go to www.beinghospitable.com.] However, without this context — and I fear most individuals won’t get it — the tagline risks coming off as simple in the head: For a company in the hospitality sector to say “Be hospitable” seems a little like an airline saying “Fly the plane”. Or maybe a restaurant saying, “Eat what’s on your plate.” As a customer, I might’ve preferred something like, “Be considered. Feel loved.”

The new, no-frills airline based in Columbus recently inaugurated service between Oakland and its home city. A business trip to Columbus-based Nationwide gave us an opportunity to check it out. The net-net: Skybus is so no-frills that it actually ends up delivering a decent experience.

Food: By offering no free food on the flight (not even peanuts or pretzel stickettes), Skybus has at least focused on selling a decent sandwich — decent enough for the flight attendant to ask two passengers near me how they liked it. Both express satisfaction. Nice to hear the FA ask this question.

The logic is odd, but it works: By charging for every extra, you can actually add value to every extra. For example, you will pay $2 for a bottle of Aqua Fina — but then you can at least tell yourself that hey, this is a bottle of Aqua Fina I’ve purchased, and that’s a whole lot better than a cup of no-name water from who-knows-where. (Forget, as usual, that Aqua Fina is itself tapped from the public water supply.)

Other airlines that charge for various types of “snak pak” should take note: If you’re going to charge for them anyway, why not put more effort into making these offerings not only decent (most aren’t even that) but actually wonderful? Why not offer different levels of for-purchase food, from basic to deluxe?

Back-of-seat pocket space: Basically, there is none. Instead, there’s the thinnest little slot in the plastic seat back. After the obligatory safety guide, airsickness bag and in-flight shopping magazine-cum-menu (handed out and gathered back up in-flight), there’s barely room to stow an extra magazine of one’s own. At first, I hate not being able to stuff all the books, pens, laptop and snacks that normally accompany me on a medium-haul flight. But the unexpected upsides soon become apparent: First, no item left behind. Second, a cleaner plane. Passing the rows of empty wrappers, discarded newspapers and other detritus when exiting some Southwest commuter flights, I can’t help but be appalled at what pigs my fellow passengers are. Skybus has neatly solved this problem: Allow no room for garbage, and pass through the cabin with a big collection cart often.

The un-uniform: Flight attendants wear black t-shirts with the airline logo on one side and a promotional message [“Killer $10 fares”] on the other. Instead of looking shabby and slacker, combined with black slacks these actually look trimmer and smarter than many of the more conventional uniforms that other airlines’ FAs wear. I imagine these shirts to change out often — first, to keep from looking worn, and second, to carry new messages.

Idiocracy now: After he delivers the prepare-for-landing message, the FA announces that the message is available for sponsorship.

If Skybus represents the reductio ad rationem of discount air travel, it’s safe to assume more airlines will follow suit. From a brand standpoint, this raises interesting questions: Will there be any real way for airlines to differentiate aside from flight times and fares? I believe so. Look for differentiation through:

• the types of food they offer for purchase, and the celebrity chefs they enroll to create signature items and menus.

• the types of media they offer for purchase, including downloadables. This could eventually lead to exclusives and premieres with studios and labels. Airline as content creator? Why not.

• the quality of their loyalty programs. Look for these to get increasingly robust.

• enhanced pre- and post-flight environments and experiences. Look for at least some airlines to seek ways to carve out more of the “total trip” experience. Web sites will continue to play a major role, but so might actual lobbies. Why not different levels of membership club, including basic levels?

1. The Golden Compass. This promises to be a glorious movie based on Philip Pullman’s incomparable adventure tale of the same name, the first volume in a trilogy known as His Dark Materials. The booth for the flick, which is due out in December, offers just the right level of tease in the form of short clips and sumptuous costumes. Nicole Kidman looks to be perfectly cast as Mrs. Coulter, the most exquisite incarnation of evil in a long, long time. I plan to be waiting in line on opening day. As for the books, if fantasy is your thing and you haven’t yet read them, treat yourself now.

2. James Sturm’s America. One of the freshest collections of graphic stories I’ve seen in a long time. [See ‘Zion Lion” in Gleaning Meaning Watch.] Better yet, James Sturm himself is sitting unobtrusively off to one side of the Drawn & Quarterly booth to sign it. Even better, Sturm relates that he has started a Center for Cartoon Studies in the small Vermont town where he lives. [cartoonstudies.org]. If I were younger and coming at storytelling anew...

3. Last Gasp, Drawn & Quarterly and all the other smaller publishers. Perusing their offerings, you feel the vitality of the medium. Since these imprints are small, many of the publishers and authors themselves (sometimes one and the same individual) staff the booths. You can get into some great conversations.

4. Buttons. José Serrano [www.serranojose.com] and I let our daughters loose to collect as many as they can. By the time we catch up with them an hour or so later, their lanyards are bandoliers of small-but-supercatchy iconography. For anyone interested in fresh logo design and company naming, this is a must-visit destination. Excellent name: Micurio, which describes itself as “an online community for sharing all your collectibles”.

5. Warner Bros. Bags. Adverting Superman: Doomsday (due out in September), they’re oversized and bright orange-and-yellow. A+ for visual impact. At the airport that evening, it’s easy to spot all the convention goers. It’s fun to think of these bags bobbing up at airports around the country, virally hyping the event.

6. Lunch at Bondi Bay. It’s just a short walk from the convention center to the restaurants and shops of the Gaslamp District, an area I remember as mysteriously dark, quiet and warehouse-filled when I was a little boy. The most interesting of these is Bondi Bay, a spacious Australian-owned and -inspired place with a smart, abo-modern interior. My daughters are drawn to the semi-private wicker seating pods.

7. The people. Part costume party, part gathering of the tribes, part geekfest — and more families than you might imagine. The future of brands: People will increasingly become their avatars. Costume is the first step, physical mods the next. Look for the return of the family crest. To some extent, I read, this is already taking place in Japan. Peter Carey cites this type of permanently dressed-up individual, whom he calls a visualist, in his little book, Wrong About Japan.

8. Running into Don Hollis and Dylan Jones. By day they’re both graphic designers — Hollis at his own namesake studio and Jones at MiresBall. On the side they run Subtext, a design boutique located in Little Italy, directly downstairs from Hollis’s studio. Subtext is dedicated what might best be described as “alternative visual culture”. It is to San Diego what Giant Robot, on Sawtelle, is to LA. Accompanied by Hollis’s wife and daughter, asleep in her stroller, they’re stocking up on new things to take back to the store. I make a point of stopping by often to pick up a new vinyl doll for my youngest daughter, Lucie.

9. College for Creative Studies (CCS). It’s great to see this fine Detroit-based school [www.ccscad.edu] promoting itself alongside other sterling design institutions such as Art Center. It will be interesting to see how the Detroit visual design community evolves and matures as the region’s economy continues to change. Right now, we see a huge vitality in the underground broadsides, posters and invites to art shows, clubs and concerts — a vitality that’s harder to find in the mainstream and generally safe work most of the bigger (and smaller) Detroit-based agencies produce.

How refreshing it is to read Rebecca Solnit. [“Detroit Arcadia”, Harper’s, July 2007]. As far as I know, she’s the first person to articulate (in an extended way in a major periodical, anyway), a vision of the city that squares with things we’ve heard and seen in bits and snatches since we started working on the region’s tourism brand. As the title of Solnit’s essay suggests, she sees a vision of a Detroit remade along more agrarian lines, nothing remotely like what it has been up until now. Though she doesn’t say so, she articulates a vision of a city reminiscent of the Garden Cities postulated in the late 19th Century, but without all the idealism and oversimplification that made such ideas unworkable. We’ve been turning lots of our colleagues and contacts onto her essay.

When I read Solnit’s essay, I think of Matthew looking out the window as we drive through the Cass Corridor, taking in all the vacant, open space where buildings once stood and exclaiming, “Dude, this should be parkland!”

I think, also, of the excellent dinner party in the back yard of Brian Boyle’s house in Palmer Woods, where this was more or less the main topic of conversation for a good half hour. Why stop at making parkland? Why not incorporate re-wilding into the new urban plan? Brian, for one, said he could see the city less as an urbanscape in the traditional sense and more as a series of interconnected urban villages. For someone not used to looking at the city this way, it is a strange lens indeed. But once you adjust to the perspective, it makes perfect sense.

I think, furthermore, of a woman I met in Mexico City who said she had a friend who moved to the Mexicantown (!) neighborhood of Detroit because of all the open space it allowed for gardening. And I think of Susan Schmidt, the Food Service Director at The Henry Ford, one of a growing number of advocates of an emerging food culture based on local and sustainably grown products.

(Incidentally, to travel directly from Mexico City to Detroit, as I did on one occasion, is to feel viscerally a sort of sharp gearshifting down in energy and vitality. After Mexico City, Detroit seems positively tranquil, hushed.)

All of these stirrings, all of these possibilities, suggest that Detroit may very well be the most interesting city in the United States to watch in the coming decade or two. Detroit offers us a chance to get certain things right after having gotten them wrong for so long, a chance to demonstrate that we as a society know how to recycle on the grandest scale, and a chance to learn lessons we might be able to apply to other places we’ve too long ignored, overlooked, or dismissed. Where Detroit goes, the rest of the nation is likely to follow.

In the most recent issue of Harper’s, Solnit took a bit of heat in the Letters to the Editor. The writer criticizes her for glossing over the very real impact of poverty on the lives of Detroiters, a poverty rooted in decades of racism. It’s a fair point to raise. But in asking how such poverty might begin to be eradicated, I wonder if a vision such as the one Solnit articulates might not be the long-sought driver of change.

A final note: Is something like this vision expressed in the tourism brand? No. Stakeholders aren’t ready for that. But our outreach effort focuses on the kind of individual (young early adopter) for whom such a vision might hold a certain appeal. So perhaps we can help to prepare the ground for a wider dialog.

Doritos asks consumers to name a new flavor of chip. What’s the harm in that? It’s fun! Who better to name the chip than those who will eat it? What better way to engage them in the brand? For a flavor name, okay, this may be harmless enough. Ben & Jerry’s has certainly secured some zingers from its cadre of loyal lickers. But too often we’ve seen companies create contests for employees to name a new brand or even company. The results invariably disappoint. The vast majority of entries have the feel of a lark — See how cute? See how clever? — without regard for what the brand represents or what the name should convey. Or, for that matter, whether some competitor is already using it. Heaven forbid the company should ask for, or any contestant should provide, a rationale for the name. We’ll know it when we see it! Those candidates that seemed clever to the individuals who thought of them seem less clever in light of the spate of similar entries from their co-workers — and less clever still in light of what’s already in general circulation. In the end, the relatively paltry reward offered by the companies almost always goes unclaimed, and a more rigorous process replaces the original, feelgood effort.

At this point, though, the name team is working at a disadvantage: Management has created the expectation that native genius will triumph. Management has created the expectation that everyone’s involved in the creative process. Management has signaled its lack of understanding of, or awareness of the need for, a rigorous process. Management has reinforced that naming is inherently non-serious and artsy-fartsy. And the new candidates are likely to be viewed with inherent dislike by a newly disenfranchised team.

Back to Doritos. At the time of the news item that appeared in BusinessWeek (6/25/07). The company had received 100,000 suggestions. According to the article, the company has not stated whether it will use any of the names, or even whether it will release the flavor. Maybe it’s all so darned fun nobody cares. But it’s also the ultimate diss of the customer one claims so fervently to respect.

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brick dick

LANDMARKLAND—Cabinet Magazine hosts a contest for “the world’s most phallic building”. The winner is the water tower of Ypsilanti, Michigan—in local parlance, the brick dick.

Fright Night

POPCULTURELAND—The name of the hit 1985 vampire horror-comedy has become eponymous with Halloween. My daily infosheet for The Rundown arrives with a hot list of the top LA Halloween parties. Heading the list: Trashy Lingerie’s Annual Halloween Costume Ball, featuring “the best barely there costumes” as well as a performance by The Stilettos. Fun!

Tony Spumoni

RETAILAND—Caffe Trieste is the quintessential historic North Beach café. Its sister venue near the corner of Dwight and San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley maintains a similar vibe—in a more generous-feeling space. At lunch, Lucie asks for gelato—ice cream is a Saturday constant. So we take a look at the flavors on display, and discover Tony Spumoni among them.

Lelli Kelly®

BRANDLAND—Lucie needs shoes: boots for the coming winter, sneakers for the playground, and thongs to wear around the house like me. At Red Wagon in Claremont we come upon Lelli Kelly—an Italian brand, it turns out, despite the name—and “market leader in the children’s footwear sector”. Unfortunately, nothing Lu’s size.

To judge by its design, the sticker on the back of the SUV in front of us en route to the freeway entrance in Lafayette might be for a brand skateboard or snowboard. In fact, it’s for a “ministry-equipping tool of Campus Crusade for Christ.” [www.godsquad.com], which pursues a vision of bringing “a chance to say ‘yes’ to the love and forgiveness that Christ offers” to every student on every campus. As ministry-equipping tools go, the site is comprehensive and clear. The home page also features an interesting short film called Venia.

http://www.godsquad.com/discipleship/essentials_forgiveness_video.htm

The allusion to the hit 70s TV show Mod Squad is hard not to consider, at least for a moment. If you want to consider it even more, you might check out God Squad the Movie on PictureDeal.com http://www.picturedeal.com/about2.html — “Home to Un-Usual Films™”, billed as “a smart-assed parody of Christian Filmmaking.”

Searching for a review of this film on Amazon, I come across yet another: TES and The God Squad. This is something altogether different — a sort of musical and performance art space created by Goddess TES (Time. Energy. Space, a “self-realized shamanic entertainer, energy worker and muse-ical ambassador of ecstatic peace.” http://tesandthegodsquad.com/.

There are many god squads, it seems, with many missions to fulfill.

your thoughts? / 0    

A word that suggests “the magic of instantaneity” — an idea that relates to a new instant mobile data communications brand we’ve been hired to name. Sounds like pseudo-Latin. What’s at the root of this cliché bit of magician’s banter? The Online Etymology Dictionary (www.etymonline.com) one of my favorite tools, dates the term to Shakespeare’s time. Initially, it was a proper name, Hocas Pocas, for a stock type of character, much like Harlequin or Pantaloon or others in the cast of the commedia. Apparently it’s a perversion of the Mass Latin blessing, Hoc est corpus meum (“This is my body”.) According to the dictionary, a more complete incantation, provided by Thomas Ady in 1655, is “Hocus pocus, tontus tabantus, vade celeriter jubeo.” It is the parent, apparently, of two other gleanmeans: hokey-pokey (“false, cheap material”) and hanky-panky (“deception, fraud”).

Of course, nowadays we know “Hokey Pokey” as the song you sang and danced to as a kid in the local skating rink. Interestingly, it was sort of written for the skating rink: The National Institute of Health & Human Services (www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/hokey.htm) notes that it was penned by Roand Lawrence LaPrise “along with two fellow musicians in the late 1940s for the ski crowd in Sun Valley, Idaho.” Interesting to consider how it spread.

Looking to reinforce the North American International Auto Show’s pre-eminent position among other U.S.-based auto shows, in 2007 the Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA), the show’s owner, launched an initiative to adopt a more strategic approach to the way the Auto Show communicates.

The organization engaged Applied Storytelling to spearhead the effort, which has yielded a series of tools and insights that show organizers are now setting in motion. Attendees will notice the first changes when they come to the 2009 Auto Show. Additional changes will follow in 2010.

Insights that helped to shape the new communications blueprint came not only from Detroit Auto Dealer Association members and staff but also from dozens of interviews with manufacturers, media and Tier One suppliers worldwide conducted by MCorp (San Rafael, California) in conjunction with Applied Storytelling.

“The new brand platform is much more than a creative campaign,” says NAIAS Executive Director Rod Alberts. “It provides a filter and guide for looking at just about every aspect of the experience we provide and the value we deliver.”

Some of these changes will be obvious and highly visible. For example, the first phase of the Auto Show’s new web site, which debuted in late October 2008, introduced the world to a new look, feel and tone geared to conveying a stronger sense of the Auto Show as a top international automotive event. The new site and identity were developed by Cincinnati-based Openfield Creative.

Acknowledging the show’s strong media focus, the new web site has also been upgraded to provide more press information in a more timely and convenient way. Prior to the January event, site content will also appear in several languages in addition to English. Additionally, the Auto Show’s ShowTalk and NewsFlash publications are migrating to a digital format in response to media preferences.

“At a time of sweeping change in the automotive industry, the Auto Show has securely positioned itself around unique strengths based on real substance, not sizzle,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “In this category as in so many others, the strongest brand is ultimately the most responsive. That’s the premise from which our work has begun.”

Marking a new milestone in realization of its 10-year strategic plan, The Henry Ford, one of America’s leading cultural institutions, has taken significant steps towards implementing the first phase of a new master plan for one of its signature attractions, Henry Ford Museum.

Approved in 2007, the new plan is being developed and implemented by the Oakland, California-based West Office. Proposed physical changes to the museum floor include a new circulation plan and reconfigured exhibit spaces. The new plan also calls for four new, centrally located exhibits to shed light on different aspects of the American Experience and provide a lively introduction to the rest of the exhibits.

A key member of the Master Plan development team, Applied Storytelling helped to guide and support the master planning effort in important ways, beginning with refinement of the museum’s existing destination brand platform. Originally developed by Applied Storytelling in 2002, the updated platform has provided the strategic framework for subsequent master planning concepts and decision-making. From there, Applied Storytelling worked closely with West Office team members, museum staff and curators to develop narratives expressing the content and experience for each of the museum’s key exhibits.

Since relaunching its institutional brand and reintroducing its family of destination brands in 2002, The Henry Ford has established itself as a brand marketing role model for cultural institutions nationwide. The institution’s brand development effort has earned several awards including the American In-House Design Award, ReBrand 100 Merit Award and two Brass Rings from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA).

Building on its initial visitor-focused platform, The Henry Ford has continued to work with Applied Storytelling to extend its narrative-driven approach to brand development to its food, retail, educational, collection, charitable giving and cause-related activities as well. Chief Marketing Officer Carol Kendra notes that since 2001 food revenue is up by $1 million, catering revenue is up by $1.3 million, ride revenue has doubled, special event and attendance revenue has almost tripled for the institution’s “big four” events, membership has nearly doubled, sponsorship revenues are up 120%, in-kind sponsorship support has grown 439% and the institution’s hotel partnership program has grown 423%.

“Applied Storytelling is one of our most valued partners,” says Kendra. “We have been working with Eric and his team since 2001 and continue to find their insight and direction vital to supporting our business plans.”

New this month from Rockport, Kim Baer’s and Jill Vacarra’s Information Design Workbook sheds a seldom opened window on a design discipline that’s rapidly growing and tantalizingly amorphous — though quite a bit less so thanks to this book’s publication. In the workbook, the D Brand Maps serve as an object lesson in information design at the service of civic policy. Developed by Applied Storytelling for the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau (DMCVB), the map system’s stated goal is to support tourism in metro Detroit through smart, streamlined wayfinding. At the same time, the maps serve a second purpose: to foster a sense of shared identity among Detroit residents and businesses who have grown accustomed to thinking of their region as a jigsaw of competing municipalities and interests.

Writes Eric La Brecque, “You can’t attach value to something until you know what it means to you. Detroit has been undervalued by tourists, but also by residents…In previous maps you see dozens of borders and boundaries. We needed a more compelling and cohesive story. That story is manifested through new maps, which don’t create an ‘us vs. you’ perception of the region.”

To date, more than a dozen organizations in the Detroit metro area have adopted the maps, which are available for free at www.dbrandsummit.com. The DMCVB has prepared new “hyperlinkable” versions in conjunction with Google, which allow users to embed links directly to D Brand Map images on their web sites. This new release marks the first time ever a civic map system has incorporated Google functionality.

Conceived by Applied Storytelling, D Brand Map system graphic design was developed by Shamus Halkowich of Los Angeles-based Meat Team.

Despite the threat of snow, some 200 individuals representing top Detroit-area cultural, educational and healthcare institutions, creative agencies, community service organizations, events and businesses came together February 1 at The Henry Ford’s historic Lovett Hall to discover and discuss how they could align their businesses around the region’s “D brand” initiative — and use the initiative’s tools and assets for business advantage. See also Going Live, December 1, 2007.

Conceived and master planned by Applied Storytelling in conjunction with Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau (DMCVB), the D Brand Summit exceeded all sponsorship and attendance targets.

Post-event plans call for the D Brand Summit web site to become a rich, continually updated content channel providing Detroit marketers with new tools, resources and real-life examples of the D brand story at work. During the summit, Jim Townsend, Executive Director of the region’s Tourism & Economic Development Council (TEDC), announced a goal of signing-on 200 adopting organizations in 2008.

D Brand early adopters sharing plans or showcasing work at the Summit included The Henry Ford, Metro Times, Strategic Staffing Solutions, Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Fusion Initiative.

your thoughts? / 0    

For the first time ever, brand marketers from a wide range of industries and interests are coming together to learn not only how to tell a powerful new story about their city — Detroit — but also how to use the city’s own official tourism brand story and assets for their own competitive advantage.

Conceived and master planned by Applied Storytelling in conjunction with Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau (DMCVB), the D Brand Summit is slated to take place February 1, 2008 at The Henry Ford, one of America’s leading cultural institutions and a center of American innovation. Applied Storytelling led development of the D Brand platform itself as well as the guidelines and regional map system used to help bring it to life.

Advancing a long-term strategy

The D Brand Summit is a key component of a long-term strategy for amplifying the effectiveness of Detroit’s “D Brand”, which launched in January 2007. Ultimately, the region’s brand stewards are using the brand to move past persistent negative perceptions of Detroit to engage tourists, businesses and the community at large in a fresh, exciting story about the city — a story grounded in Detroit’s own unique history, culture, character and aspirations.

Taking a non-traditional approach

This strategy runs counter to strategies traditionally used by cities to engage the community at large in their tourism and economic development brand initiatives. Typically, such strategies rely heavily for uptake on splashy launch events and locally based businesses’ own sense of civic responsibility and goodwill. Borrowing insights from the private sector, Detroit has charted a different, more pragmatic course — one that relies on enlightened self-interest and acknowledges that relatively few organizations, at least initially, possess the resources or focus to serve as truly effective brand advocates.

First objective: Engage early adopters

Instead, Detroit’s brand builders opted to focus first on a limited number of willing and capable “early adopter” organizations. Applied Storytelling worked closely with these organizations’ own marketers to identify ways in which the D Brand could actively strengthen their own, specific business and brand-building initiatives. The first three early adopters included The Detroit Tigers, Strategic Staffing Solutions, a leading international IT recruiting and outsourcing organization headquartered in Downtown Detroit, and the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Fusion initiative, a sustained effort to encourage young professionals to live, work, play and stay in Detroit.

Sharing real-world successes

These and other early adopters will share their real-world experiences, successes and results using the D Brand at the D Brand Summit on February 1. Additionally, attendees will be able to work directly with nationally recognized brand innovators in a variety of specialized areas to learn ways to strengthen their own brand practices.

A timely keynote for a region in transition

John Kao, author of the recent business bestseller Innovation Nation, will be the keynote speaker. In Innovation Nation, Kao, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on business creativity, takes a close, hard look at America’s declining innovation capability — and then provides a comprehensive prescription for restoring it to strength. In a region in which a growing number of minds are working to articulate a vision and plan for a re-emergent Detroit — a Detroit 3.0 — the topic couldn’t be more timely.