Today’s Los Angeles Times features the success story of our client DineEquity reaching its goal of being 99% franchised. The parent brand DineEquity was created about a year after IHOP acquired the larger Applebee’s chain in 2007. Baker named and branded the new company, also creating the tagline, “Great franchisees. Great brands.” We continue to work with the company on various programs and communications initiatives.

CEO Julia Stewart supports the franchise model because it reduces costs and increases profit, and the numbers support her claim. The company’s stock is up more than 8% this year. To read the entire article, click here.

To learn more about our work with DineEquity, click here.

Congratulations, DineEquity, on achieving your goal and a successful year!

As a creative director, one of my consistent objectives is to look at problems from new and different perspectives. Each one of us has a unique thumbprint, DNA and personal style. These contribute to an almost automatic approach to problem solving. The universal challenge is after you have exhausted all the ideas that come naturally — how do you push yourself further? How do you explore new angles that typically aren’t your first thoughts?

In a recent article, Tina Seeling, a PHD in neuroscience at Stanford University, offers many excellent examples and analogies on how taking different perspectives can lead to breakthrough thinking in any industry. Read, enjoy and apply!

Turning compliance into an opportunity to build culture and engage employees in a fresh and meaningful way.

Today companies face similar brand and culture challenges, which limit their potential.

We’ve seen it with our own clients. Case in point: We are currently helping several companies transform their businesses and evolve their cultures and brands to better reflect their potential today and their vision for tomorrow.

These companies are in different industries. They range from 20 to 98 years in business, and have revenues ranging from $200 million to $6 billion. Despite the differences in industry, size and age, they all face similar challenges: They lack a clear vision, purpose and set of values. They have poor internal communications. And their brand stories and differentiators have not kept pace with how the world has changed over the past decade.

The factors that are holding these companies back fall into two categories: culture and brand. Both are mission critical to any company’s success — and when not handled properly, can even threaten an organization’s future growth and sustainability.

Cultures need leadership, purpose and alignment.

Many leaders have excellent backgrounds and track records in operations or engineering or finance. However, they lack a clear and consistent vision and do not possess the communication skills to effectively reach their people. For employees, that translates into the feeling that the company’s leadership is either weak or confused — or both.

In addition, the demands of downsizing, right sizing and every one doing double and triple what they once did is also taking its toll — translating into lackluster earnings and employee performance. It’s commonplace for employees today to be burned out, apathetic and ineffective — issues that all come to light in the Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study which highlights issues such as employees’ stress and anxiety about the future and job security, and doubts about the level of interest and support from upper management.

Having a cultural common purpose does impact a company’s bottom line. In IBM’s recent CEO study, Leadership Through Connections, three imperatives were found essential for outperformance: empowering employees through values, engaging customers as individuals and amplifying innovations with partnerships. CEOs see greater organizational openness ahead. As rules are redefined and collaboration explodes, having a strong sense of sense of purpose and shared beliefs to guide decision-making will be key to avoiding chaos, protecting a business’ future, and delivering stellar results.

Companies need to practice brand basics.

For a variety of reasons, many companies have not invested the time, resources and money into developing effective brand fundamentals such as platform tools, consistent and aligned touch points, and internal methods for disciplined brand stewardship over time.

We often encounter companies that have not adapted or evolved their brands, even though the world and the marketplaces in which they compete have changed significantly. As a result, their brands look dated and their messaging and positioning are no longer appropriate or relevant.

A good brand positioning is a differentiated market position that no other company can legitimately claim, captured in a powerful brand idea. It should be simply worded and function as a totem pole around which actions, behaviors and communications are aligned. The brand idea must be used internally as an affirmation of a distinctive and dedicated culture and externally as a competitive advantage.

Another frequently missed opportunity is the lack of emotional connection to a brand. Companies need to make a connection with their audiences with compelling messaging and a riveting, authentic brand story. The story helps people connect on an ethical, logical and emotional level to capture hearts and minds.

It is also imperative to have the right touch points for your audiences to receive your messages. Today corporate communications is a two-way street. All audiences expect to receive it the way they want — when and where they want. Only by knowing your audiences intimately will the right delivery channels become apparent — social, digital as well as traditional.

In conclusion

So, what will help you become the market leader your company has the potential to be? It’s simple. Make an investment in integrated brand tools and acquire the discipline to execute your brand across company silos, as well as media channels.

Manage for your long-term success and sustainability. Brand development is not inventing what you should be. It’s uncovering the potential of what you are. Help your company develop a distinctive culture and strong brand that’s unique. Then, reinforce the connection between your brand and your audiences — both internally and externally. In doing so, you’ll create employees and customers that will be ambassadors and advocates for life.

Read more of our thoughts on our website here!

No power. Never have two little words meant so much, especially in regards to the recent devastating hurricane damage dominating our newsfeeds — and the occasional local electricity disruptions we have been experiencing in our locale. To consider that thirty-four percent of American households have only wireless telephones, (according to the most recent data from the National Health Interview Survey, recorded late 2011) that’s a lot of people who might be lining up at the pay phone during a long power outage.

So with our incredible dependency on the electric grid to keep our gadgets and cell phones going, I’ve gathered a list of some alternatives to help you power up: enough to keep you juiced up in a major (or minor) emergency or just to make sure you have enough battery potency to meet your friends at the right place for Happy Hour.

1. This portable USB power pack is about the size of a credit card — so long as you’ve remembered to keep your charger charged — this can keep your phone working during long days on the go.
2. A functional double duty iPhone case that’s also a back-up battery: adding up to 6 hours of extra talk time.
3. Solar battery chargers are plentiful, and practical not just for sunny weather residents.
4. Let’s not forget the combo mini-wind/solar/handcrank charger!
5. Bicycle chargers, this one also charges your bike lights.
6. Emergency single battery charger. A single AA battery charger is small enough to fit in your emergency kit or your handbag.
7. This super-useful hand-crank generator gets my vote as it takes 120 volts so all kinds of devices can be plugged in.

In recent days, I’ve picked up a bit of a hobby in my spare time: working with a production company. Now it’s not really “working” in the traditional sense of the word where one expects to be compensated by money or other means. In fact, profit isn’t the end goal for this production company; their end goal is creation for creativity’s sake; a bit of a refreshing rhetoric for a company to have these days.

The company I’ve been speaking of is hitRECord, incorporated about three years ago by actor Joseph Gordon Levitt who started the project several years before that. In his words, hitRECord is an “open collaborative production company,” meaning that anyone can contribute to projects they’re working on and anyone can download, remix, and upload those projects. This is, in it’s basic form, how they work together and generate the art they later exhibit on road tours or through books, DVDs, records, clothing, etc. they sell through their store. After recouping the costs of production, hitRECord will split the profits 50/50, half going to the company and half being distributed amongst the artists who contributed to the finished work. The pay isn’t much, if anything but, like I mentioned earlier, the money isn’t the reason for participating — it’s more of a bonus, really.

So why am I writing about hitRECord? There are not a whole lot of companies out there that do what they do the way they do it for the reason they do it: to create, that’s it. It’s why I got into the creative field in the first place — to put something into the world that wasn’t there before, to share what I have to an audience that may take enjoyment or, better yet, inspiration from it. And even more incredible, I get to work with and draw inspiration from brilliant minds all over the world!

It’s an incredible blessing to get paid to be creative, but it’s nice to be able to separate creativity and creation from financial need. It’s nice to step back and create just because it’s what you need to feel fulfilled. It’s something that I feel is not exclusive to those we consider “creatives” either. It’s why some keep a garden, why some build furniture, why some perfect a pie recipe. We need something we can nurture, grow and call our own. It’s our banner we can hold up and say “this is why I’m unique,” and it’s nice to have the opportunity do that for a reason other than to pay the bills.

Calls to action are nothing new. Whether you’re aware of them or not, you hear them every day. Companies fly banners and shout rallying cries constantly to get you to march in line with them; “Just do it.” “Think different.” Why do they have these? Because they work. They speak to the core of what it is to be human. They tap into our personal beliefs—both about ourselves and the world at large.

Consumer facing brands have long understood the power of a rallying cry to encourage people to buy their products. Companies have the same opportunity to attract and retain employees with internal branding. They can use the rallying cry tool to allure the type of talent they want, engage their employees and create loyalty within their ranks. As mentioned before, calls to action are effective because they’re simple and speak to our emotional core—our “gut” as it were. Finding this core, this “gut instinct,” within your company’s values is the secret ingredient to developing an effective call to action. Simon Sinek asks, “Why do you do what you do?” Surprisingly, this is a challenging question for many organizations. He then goes on to state “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” If you can accurately and simply express what it is you believe, you’ll attract like-minded people who align with your purpose and vision. They will be your fiercely engaged employees, your brand advocates and ambassadors. Your call to action is simply the expression of your company’s core belief and the rallying cry you use can garner the culture and talent you desire.

Follow this link to find tips on creating your call to action and see how other companies are utilizing their rallying cries

To introduce a new line of deodorant LYNX created the first invisible ad. Special LED screens were mounted to windows of an abandoned terrace house. To the un-glassed passerby there is nothing special to see. But if you have sunglasses on the voyeur in you got a treat.

The music video, “I think she’s ready” by FKi, Iggy Azalea, & Diplo is being called “The World’s First Interactive Shoppable Video.” Shot in LA and styled entirely by Ssense, all the items in the video can be purchased using an interactive hotspot technology from wireWax that lets you purchase directly through the video. Just click on Iggy Azalea as she’s throwing her lines and you can have the same look for tonight’s party. 

http://www.ssense.com/video/iggy-azalea-diplo-fki-i-think-she-ready/

Two years ago, Chris Anderson delivered a TED Talk about Crowd Sourced Innovation. The idea was simple: Internet access was creating what was effectively a global laboratory online. The Crowd phenomenon signified that billions of individuals were more connected than they ever had been before. In just one of his examples Anderson outlines the path of progress:

“Kids in Japan are taking moves from a YouTube video created in Detroit, building on it within days and releasing a new video, while teenagers in California are taking the Japanese video and remixing it to create a whole new dance style.”

But there’s more to this global phenomenon. Recently, Tech Crunch published an article titled “The Cloud Will Cure Cancer.” This is the other side of this new paradigm — The Cloud — millions of computers sharing the load and more capable together than they ever could be apart. The article makes a compelling case: shared research, data correlation and computational capability on a global scale translates to “exponentially faster medical progress.”

As the Cloud/Crowd continues to grow — in every arena — innovation accelerates as it must.

So why is any of this relevant at the corporate level? I was thinking of this just the other day when someone asked me whether Social Media was really relevant to the success of a company. And to that I would say it is not just relevant — it has become one of the most effective ways a company has to foster innovation.

No matter how small or large a company is, innovation is enhanced by collaboration, and collaboration is fostered by connections. Social Media both facilitates and accelerates connections. Ideas can be tested on a grand scale, quickly and effectively. Information can be disseminated almost instantaneously, both up and downstream. Everyone has a voice.

And all of this starts with the establishment of Social Media mechanisms that a company can use to connect with it’s employee base, everywhere they are. Many companies make the mistake of thinking Social Media is meant simply for recreational activity. But it is so much more than that — it is a tangible, authentic, and active connection to everyone that makes up that company. And for any company that hopes to succeed in the 21st Century and beyond, that kind of connection is just plain necessary.