I am also reminded of Maslow’s Towards a Psychology of Being – we need to see happiness in context – he asked us to imagine a happy concentration camp officer. Is happiness really what we want?

I work for Peachpit Press and thought you and your readers would like to know that he just released his very first video, INNOVATION WORKSHOP: Brand Strategy + Design Thinking = Transformation.

The 45-minute video presents concepts from his bestselling “whiteboard” books – THE BRAND GAP, ZAG, and THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY – plus downloadable exercises that will help you and your team work through brand innovation questions. Overall, this video expands to fill a one-day workshop (an $800 value!) for an extremely affordable price. Check it out below:

http://su.pr/2iE1k5

On brand reinvention: Hammer said you need to keep the core the same. Then use the available tools out there to help people understand the new parts of the brand. This comes back to the New York Times analogy on where to spend your time when reinventing a brand.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124261160266029087.html

* Story telling is not only the contents but also the way that story tellers tell
* How you phrase invitation and appreciation to audience is important
* Specificity always win universally. General statements will not catch audience’s attention
* Watch audience and think what audience feel from the beginning to the end

During the session, I had two things in my mind
1) Can story telling be a competitive advantage in content business?
2) Is story telling a skill/technique or a sense/passion?

For 1), I believe that Disney/Pixar’s strength and commitment is obviously story telling. However surprisingly, when I worked at Disney for summer internship, no one in the company was convinced by my opinion “Disney’s strength is story telling”. Can story telling itself make money in business? Do customers choose Pixar because of its attractive story telling? Still unknown

For 2), it reminds me of a TV program of Mr. Miyazaki, the director of Studio Ghibli, a most famous Japanese animation studio which influences Pixar in many ways (well known films are… Spirited away, Princess Mononoke, a castle in the sky). I saw that he turned down the young animators’ work hundreds of time because “the picture does not tell the story at all. Animators were apparently confused because they did not know how to change. Same scene I have seen when I saw the documentary of how Pixar made films. One director of Pixar scolded a young CG designer saying that the graphic did not tell story… So story telling is skill? or sense?

Entrepreneurship is a PRACTICE. You learn by doing. Sometimes you bat it out of the park. Sometimes you fail. Despite the outcome, keep doing…

“The pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness.”

However, if you constantly find yourself having to apologize, you probably need to re-examine your brand promise and figure out what’s wrong with your product/service/process.

If you are saying one thing and constantly doing another, then you demonstrate a lack of sincerity about all 3 steps of the transgression recovery.

I’m not sure what makes for a “transgressive brand”, but I can’t imagine it being a very sustainable business model. Even the fun, irreverent, edgy companies still need to deliver on their promise if they want to be successful.

Just to build on your example, here is an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123836533076467327.html

Inside, you have an interesting quote:

“Resuscitating the Kodak brand won’t be easy. In 2001, Kodak was ranked the 27th-most-valuable brand in the world, according to Omnicom Group’s Interbrand. Last year, it fell off Interbrand’s closely followed list of the top 100 global brands. “It’s still a highly recognized brand” but “you can’t support a great brand without great products,” says Jez Frampton, chief executive of Interbrand.”

New bottom line for future entrepreneurs: “Make Oprah love your product!”

I don’t say that as a general rule, but depending on the time and the situation, apologizing may be too much. And in times of crisis, if everybody says sorry or if there is no more hierarchy of values (people say sorry for everything), apologizing is not authentic.

Even to say sorry, you have to be aligned and close the gap between what you say and what you do. If not, there may be no value added to “sorry”.

“Slattery, the PC World writer, said he generally was excited about Twitter until recently. Now he finds the site to be ‘an incredibly unreliable source of information.’”*

Umm…did Twitter ever promise to be a reliable source of information? No. This is the site that asks “What are you doing now?” to ordinary people…it’s not WebMD or Wikipedia!

*Source: CNN.com, “Swine flu creates controversy on Twitter”

Yes, the lack of t-shirts and long lines were really annoying as some of the other posts point out. But what I took away, like this author, was NOT that you have to get the T-shirts right to be successful. Instead, I will take away from this case that you can succeed despite messing up many things as long as those transgressions fits within your brand relationship and you don’t break your core promise.

The distinction of Harley Davidson as the rebellious friend and TurboTax as the competent business partner really crystallized for me how we can apply the concepts from class to other brands. Even without seeing the data, I am sure Turbo Tax would have high competence scores and low excitement or ruggedness. The post also really brought home the importance of knowing your role as brand- are you the best friend? business partner? lover? parent figure? While these relationships are clearer in real life, they are equally important between brands and consumers.

The waitress: “What would you like to drink?”
The Patron: “A coke”
The waitress: “What type of Coke?”
The Patron: “A Dr. Pepper”

The funniest use of the recall concept!