Poke the Box

Happy New Year! After taking some much needed time off, I am back and I want to start our 2012 by show casing Seth Godin’s discussion on not being another average nobody. In the above video, Seth talks about the ‘forever recession’, derived from the industrial factory era, which led to creation of the top-down-fear based economic models and how one can join the race to the top, instead of settling for the bottom.

2012 is the year of disruption and innovation and forming real relationships.

I am also looking forward to announcing a new project shortly that I’ve been working on for quite a while now. More details to follow.

Branding in the era of Social Business.

The main core philsophy behind this “EarnedWeb” project with Web denoting the connections is earning influence (personal and business) through honest connections. Here’s a repost of Seth Godin’s thoughts on Brand Exceptionalism which demonstrates this very well. FYI:  I also post other content on the twitter hashtag #earnedweb for your viewing pleasure as well.

Brand exceptionalism

Your brand is your favorite. After all, it’s yours. You understand it, you helped build it, you’re obsessed with the nuance behind it. Your organization’s actions make sense to you, you sat in the room as they were being argued about… you might even have helped make some of the decisions.

So, your brand doesn’t do anything wrong. What it does is the best it could do under the circumstances. Someone who knew what you know would make the very same decision, because under the circumstances it was the only/best option.

Of course we should buy from you. You’re better!

When your brand starts falling behind a competitor (Dell vs. Apple, Microsoft vs. Google, Washington Mutual vs. Everyone and then Apple vs. Android, Google vs. Facebook)… you say it’s not fair, nor expected.

The problem with brand exceptionalism is that once you believe it, it’s almost impossible to innovate. Innovation involves failure, which an exceptional brand shouldn’t do, and the only reason to endure failure is to get ahead, which you don’t need to do. Because you’re exceptional.

In the battle for attention or market share, the market makes new decisions every day. And the market tends to be selfish. Often, it will pick the arrogant market leader (because the market also tends to be lazy), but upstarts and new competitors always have an incentive to change the game or the story.