What's all this Vague talk?

Lot's of people think that when brand experts start talking about things like mission, vision purpose, that they are just too vague. These concepts are big, but they certainly aren't vague. And they are meaningful.

Here's How this model works:

Mission Vision and Purpose (or Cause) are concepts at increasingly universal levels, not—as some think—increasingly abstract. And, they can apply to an individual life as well as a company.

First, goals are about personal actions or impact (Here are specific actions I plan to take.) Most people are knowledgable about and comfortable with goal-making. We've all got to have something that we plan to do and have some way to measure it. We're going to sell this many units. I'm going to Jog every day. I want to call everyone on the vendor list with this questionaire. These are goals.

Second, mission is about interpersonal impact with others. (Here is how I want to interact with you.) The important thing here is that this is not about things the company wants to do but how it wants to interact with customers, vendors, suppliers, every other entity it comes in contact with. In this model, the brand promise is at the level of mission because it's how we promise to interact with our customers, but the mission involves everyone, not just customers.

Vision is about Social impact (Here is how I want to change the world.) A company or an individual can have a vision of the world that is before us, and how that world can be changed by you. It includes your intended affect on the world.

Purpose seems the simplest, but it's actually the most universal (Here is what I was created to do.) I don't actually like the word "Cause" because causes can be picked up and put down, but it's more comfortable for some people. The conundrum here is that personally, this is the question that we all ask of ourselves in some version or other, even if we last asked it when we were five years old. And yet it is the question that often remains unconsidered as we get older. And it's actually more difficult for individuals than it is for companies. Every company was created for something. The answer "just to make money" is just an immediate and a surface answer, and I guarantee there's a deeper purpose to why a company was created, or it's found along the way. And sometimes it's known but deliberately hidden. Imagine that deep inside you want to unlock the secrets of the universe, and you start a biotech company. You might be shy about that.
 
But my point here is that if you know the answers to these bigger (but not vaguer) questions, then there is a greater depth of meaning to what you do. It's easier to attract the talent you want, the vendors you want, the customers you want, because there will be that depth of meaning. Why does it work like this? Because companies are created by and made up of people, and there's no reason to assume that all observances about people ceases to apply simply because they are organized into a company.

 

Posted by brucelee [General] ( May 03, 2007 10:48 AM ) Permalink

Griefing, Harshing, Blurring --Sim going down...

I was in Second Life last night, wasting time, really. But having fun doing it. I was in Virtual Festival, watching the amazing costumes and dancers, and the newbies standing around gob-smacked having their first Second Life Sim experience. When suddenly this guy with green eyes and hands and a last name that is some kind of mnemonic for "demon" is wearing a house. It's a beach house on pylons, and he's wearing it on it's side. Believe me, it's huge and ugly and takes up most of the dance floor. Then the IMs start.

"Take off the house, man."

"Give me $5 and I will."

For a moment, I seriously considered it. Then someone asks green hair demon boy how old he is, and he says "11 yrs".

"Right, and you're a genius."

But I believed it. This is kind of typical 11 year old behavior, after all.

Problem is, with this kind of harshing, you can't throw someone out of the sim, or retroactively ban them. There's no button that you can push to jettison the kid into space, assuming he even is a kid or a he. And Virtual Festival doesn't have any bouncers. No weapons are allowed in this Sim. You can't even push someone, er--an avatar. No one could convince Demon Green Hair to leave. He was thriving on the angy interaction anyway.

So what happened? They shut down the sim. That way they could ban him before it came back up again. Not quite a real social experiment, since you can't really do that in real life. Burning Man doesn't get shut down and restarted just because someone is wearing a house. But in real life or 1L as some call it (not, you might note--RL) you can get your butt carted off to jail. You can even get killed, something that wearing a house shouldn't warrant, but then again, it's just a game.... or is it.

The other day I was wondering where I put my long blue scarf. Then I realized, in real life, I don't own a long, blue scarf. This is a scarf my avatar in second life owns. How blurred will it get?

Posted by brucelee [General] ( April 09, 2007 10:07 AM ) Permalink

More pics

In the morning we went to the largest Meiji era cemetary in Tokyo. Here's Zee Zee trying to figure out where we are. 

 

Friday night it rained, just to show us how beautiful the streets are, glistening with rain, and how the umbrellas magically appear. 

 

And finally, Shinjuku. These lights sprang up out of relative darkness. It made me wonder about Tokyo's power bill. It must be astounding. This view certainly was.

 

All for now... More later.
 

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 27, 2007 03:04 PM ) Permalink

What you've been waiting for

Morning in Tokyo

Bruce, Zee Zee and the Sun Japan K.K. team.

 

One of the Amazing dishes at Ninja restaurant. This is Monkfish liver Pate. Like a jewel.

Sunset, Tokyo.

 

I'll post more as they become available.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 26, 2007 04:01 PM ) Permalink

Wow!

It's unbelievable that two days have already passed and I'm already done with the business part of the trip. But so be it. 

Here are some highlights:

1. totally gracious hosts! The Sun K.K. team is absolutely fantastic. We were taken care of every step of the way. It really makes me wonder about us in the US. We don't treat our guests very well, I think.

2. really productive work. The way Japanese business is conducted really suits my natural inclination to get buy-in and agreement from everyone. So the meetings seemed in some ways more natural than business meetings in the states where everyone shouts each other down, advocating for an idea. In those shouting matches, sometimes the loudest persons idea gets implemented, instead of the best idea. So we accomplished a lot.

3. amazing food. We had a wide variety of food, including chirashi, my favorite Sashimi and rice dish on yesterday, and the pork filet lunch with hand ground sesame sauce that we had today. But what really stands out is the Ninja restaurant, half theatre, magic and intrigue of the ninja, and half traditional japanese food with truly amazing presentation. Haute Cuisine at it's finest.

 

 

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 26, 2007 03:01 AM ) Permalink

The plane has landed

I'm in Tokyo! And I'm here to talk about the big brand values...the things that make us do what we do. It couldn't be more exciting, and I'm as prepared as I possibly can be. I'm prepared with materials. I'm prepared to listen. That's one of the most important things any of us can do.

The Friendly Limousine trip from Narita to downtown Tokyo was uneventful, with the highway looking for all the world like a highway anywhere else in the world. A couple of hotels got up like neon pinball machines pop up alongside the highway. Hotel Hibiscus. Hotel Dayglo.

Then the real Tokyo--tall tall buildings and a big red sun in a purplish haze that took its own time to set. By the time we arrived at the hotel, it was dark, and we had to dodge luminaries and a phalanx of press people who were after them. With flashbulbs and bright lights going off in our faces, we finally got to the checkin desk at the hotel.

It's so safe here, and I guess so the opposite of safe in the states, that it felt weird to leave our luggage,  receipts and all, with the bus driver and porters downstairs. But sure enough, they showed up at the right place at the right time. And everyone is gracious and forgiving of my ignorance. For that I'm thankful.  I'll try to post some pics in a bit.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 24, 2007 02:40 PM ) Permalink

A couple of things

First, the GM Saturn

If you take a look at the new Saturn as described in the GM corporate blog by Bob Lutz, GM Chairman, the word brand is mentioned no less than five times in a single entry at the top of the page. So what's the result of this attention to the Saturn brand? Experience!

When the new Saturn Aurora premiered in the Detroit Auto Show earlier this week, the reporter from NPR asked about what made this car different, he couldn't really describe it. He went on about how it really seemed like "they spent some money on this". Get the NPR Audio here. Ah, the intangible attractions of brand and design. Saturn probably didn't spend much more, if any more on the interior of the car, but what they did was pay attention to what made a difference to customers, and put  resources into design. This is up front cost, but good design can potentially even save you money down stream. Just think of the Ford Cherokee rollover problem if you doubt this.

 Second,

Consumer reports has a brand problem. It's not a baby-seat problem, per se, but it all started with Consumer reports playing to hard with the razor's edge. Their biggest brand asset was truth. Only truth doesn't sell as well as scandal. They've never been brought up short by bad research before, but making the readership numbers is a powerful motivator. The only thing that a research business like Consumer Reports has to trade is trust. The deadliest thing for them would be to lose the trust of their readers. Brand equals reputation.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 19, 2007 02:14 PM ) Permalink

It's simple silly! or is that silly simple?

 

My Pals in xDesign and Hardware design have been sending some great links recently!

Here's one from Matthias Mueller-Prove on prototyping, and one from Chris Frank on simplicity. 

Read 'em and try not to weep.
 

Posted by brucelee [General] ( January 08, 2007 06:49 AM ) Permalink

Bruce Lee Returns

Posted by brucelee [General] ( December 11, 2006 10:16 AM ) Permalink

Last night

Well, So much has happened since I last blogged. Sometimes it's hard to stop living and start reporting on it. Last night we sat down with a bunch of innovators and talked Algonquin-round-table style about topics that Sun is passionately interested in. Community involvement in our marketing programs, the value of webcasts and podcasts, the mix of brand and lead generation in advertising. I got to meet new people, including Miles Dennison from InfoWorld, Sean Weglage from ComputerWorld, and Jennel Hicks from NetworkWorld. At my table was also Ben Taft from Foundry Networks, a very smart chap from a company sellling, as you might guess, network infrastructure. We shared lots about the new world of blogging, bottom-up participation, and I realized that we are all facing the same problems, but that Sun has something to share about new media. Others are just putting their toes into the lake of participation that we're already swimming in. It's the bleeding edge. One group reported that Vlogging, Webcasts and the like were just a flash in the pan, but "we might as well participate in them anyway", because... Why not? It can't hurt. I remember a while back some people said that about the world wide web, too.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( December 06, 2006 10:29 AM ) Permalink

Oh Mary,

Wow! I cruised over to Mary's blog today, and got to read her Shanghai shower enty. Wooo. This isn't really all that racy, even though it does happen in a shower, but it's just creepy that a stranger in a strange town has that much in common with our Mary. I was at a benefit we put on for a friend with bad health problems, and our friend Bart did a semi-karaoke drag version of "I will Survive". You don't know him, so I'll explain. He dresses in several nylon neglige's a white little old lady wig, a square dance skirt and cat-eye glasses. During the song, he gyrates, gesticulates, points, pouts and preens. He doesn't make any attempt to lip synch, for which I am glad. Did the audience stand there silently with mouths agog? No! They screamed, clapped and yelled. Sigh... Gloria Gaynor and her little song. I Will Survive has gone from hit to has-been to cliche to anthem for the over it. Everyone knows this feeling. I'm happy to be in a human family with a common language. This is how borders dissolve.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( November 02, 2006 07:16 AM ) Permalink

Change Mo' Head

On Tuesday I attended the M2 conference in San Francisco. This is supposed to be read em-squared like marketing squared. It's put on by Butler Shine Stern and Partners. In the interest of full disclosure, we're clients of theirs, so we got in free.

I do have a bit of a complaint. The day started with an hour-long networking breakfast, but I didn't know it, so I rushed to the city at 6am, only to find that the content didn't start till 9am. I did get to do a bunch of networking, but still, it would have been good to know.

Some great stuff happened. I'll give you a few highlights.

Greg Stern blew me away by quoting John Lennon before the first guest speaker even showed up: "I just want to change your head."

The back story to this leads back to my personal life, in which my significant other and myself constantly say to one another one of these two phrases.

"Change Mo' Head." Which means "I need to think about this in a different way."

or "Change Yo' Head." for which I think the meaning is obvious.

It's great to think this change yo' head concept came from John Lennon, or at least came from the giant collective unconcious of which John Lennon is a part.

It's important to remember that we often have little control over our environment except in how we react to it.

In other words, nothing will be different unless you change how you think about it. Change Yo' Head!

More on this dang conference tomorrow. I swear.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( October 05, 2006 12:00 AM ) Permalink

In case you don't get it

Here's a quote from the Harvard University Press review of the 2004 Winner of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award Competition, Computer and Information Science: Steven Weber's highly acclaimed book, The Success of Open Source.

Traditionally, intellectual property law has allowed companies to control knowledge and has guarded the rights of the innovator, at the expense of industry-wide cooperation. In turn, engineers of new software code are richly rewarded; but, as Weber shows, in spite of the conventional wisdom that innovation is driven by the promise of individual and corporate wealth, ensuring the free distribution of code among computer programmers can empower a more effective process for building intellectual products. In the case of Open Source, independent programmers--sometimes hundreds or thousands of them--make unpaid contributions to software that develops organically, through trial and error.

So you are saying WTF. I know you are. Why do I quote this? Because some people, especially corporate lawyers do not get it about open source. Legal and Open communities have it out all the time. Isn't it about time that intellectual property law is transformed to match the needs of the new millineum? I don't know exactly what needs to be done, but I do know that people need to talk.

End of sermon.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( September 06, 2006 08:27 PM ) Permalink

Not a terrorist event, we think

This weekend, all our phones went out.

I mean all of them...

Everyone's cell phone, everyones land lines. They all went out.
The phone company was mum on why, but I'm sure it's because the mobile carriers use land lines to carry signal sometimes. If we'd had an emergency that required an ambulance, we would have been out of luck. Your cell phone is not a backup to a problem like this.

But guess what?

We had web tone. Yep. All the dial tone lines were dead and useless as a beached whale, but DSL web worked perfectly. Dial Tone was out for 10 hours.

Can Sun and Sun technology help with this? Can we find a way to connect with emergency personnel via the web? It's already a known problem with VOIP, that 911 isn't connected, though according to my friend Mary, they are working on it. What about cases like this where DSL is unharmed, but phone lines are up? Seems like the solution is A. the right thing to do, and B. good for Sun.

Signing off from Davenport, where the phone company called at 8am to see if the phone was working.
"Yes," I said with my smart alec hat on, and not quite enough caffeine in my system, "it rang, and I answered it. That must mean it's working."

Posted by brucelee [General] ( September 05, 2006 09:41 AM ) Permalink

How to be successful with corporate blogs:

(With hats off to Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations)

1. Well first off, have a management that says, "We trust you, go ahead and blog. Blog about anything you want. Anything, really."

2. To make sure change happens, ensure that mid-level people are empowered. Every company can have an executive staff that blogs. And in cases where only the executives blog, it's often boring. Conversations are important, not top-down communications.

3. Realize that ROI on blogging is soft, but significant. What's the ROI of someone liking you, or for something like helping out with Katrina? Don't kill the blogs because you can't see a direct ROI.

4. Very few people ever make money by blogging, but many make money because they blog. You've still got to have great products, but once you do, then the transparent conversation of blogging can help you reach your customer and keep the relationship going.

5. A blog is a way to give readers one of two things, either something useful or something interesting. Please do one or the other.

6. Don't be afraid to be a little controversial. When you enter a fist fight, don't be afraid to whack someone on the head with a bottle.

7. Figure out any way you can to extend the conversation. In the future, a company will get more of a customer/fan/friend's energy if readers believe in the enterprise, and know the people--not just the products.

They'll sure get more of my attention.

Posted by brucelee [General] ( September 01, 2006 01:24 PM ) Permalink