12-foot omphalos helps tell a story

Last week, I wrote a post about storytelling in unique media - here's another example.

Even public art can inspire stories.

Picture the sculpture, "Cloud Gate," by Anish Kapoor in Chicago’s Millennium Park. The sculpture is shaped like an ellipse, and its legume-like appearance has caused it to be nicknamed The Bean. It is made of 168 highly polished stainless steel plates, and stands at 33 feet high, 66 feet long, and 42 feet wide, weighing 110 tons.

From a distance it could be mistaken for a huge drop of mercury, while up close its highly reflective surface captures and transforms the skyline, the downtown cityscape and even the passers-by into a wonderfully warped new vista. The 12-foot underbelly is called the “omphalos” or navel and multiplies reflections in a vortex. The artist, Anish Kapoor, has referred to the sculpture as “a gate to Chicago, a poetic idea about the city it reflects.”

"What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline…so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around," Kapoor said. "I hope what I have done is make a serious work, which deals with serious questions about form, public space and an object in space. You can capture the popular imagination and hold other points of interest, but that is not what I set out to do, although there is inevitably a certain spectacular in an object like this."

Chicago on Dwellable

4 signs of negative indoctrination and blocks to innovation

“I know I’m right and I’m not going to allow any contrary discussions about it.”

Ever hear a team leader express that thought – explicitly or implicitly? Have YOU ever expressed it? Felt it? And when it’s expressed, what message is the listener getting? Probably this, “Adopt our thinking without question or get off the team.”

Back on June 26, I blogged about the often-used phrase “Drink the Kool-Aid,” which means to buy the company line or to enthusiastically perform a task without knowing how it may affect you.

While the phrase is used so much in jest, let’s not forget how it can stifle creativity and innovation. Or worse, how it can be a sign of a real leadership problem.

The Power of Story author Jim Loehr writes to watch for these signs of negative indoctrination:

1. Increasing intolerance for beliefs and values that don’t absolutely align with yours;
2. Increasing rigidity and inflexibility in thinking and action;
3. Increasing use of fear and threat of retribution if what you say is not acted on or taken seriously; and
4. Increasing inability to see value in opposing points of view.

Learn more about Jim’s book on the Stinson Brand Innovation reference library page.

The examples above can just as easily by applied, of course, to life outside the boardroom and workplace. Fanatical thought and coercive behavior have no place as we seek to expand our creative lives – in the classroom, the office, the chapel, the lab, or the home.

110-story Sears Tower re-branding today

The sleek black building that looms over this city's skyline has for 36 years been instantly recognizable as the Sears Tower. Until now.

The 110-story building — once the world's tallest, now the tallest in the Western Hemisphere — officially became the Willis Tower Thursday in a ceremony in downtown Chicago.

The switch was part of the deal struck by Willis Group Holdings, an insurance brokerage with offices in New York and London, when it leased 150,000 square feet in the famous skyscraper.

Company Chairman and CEO Joseph Plumeri and Mayor Richard Daley unveiled a sign out front bearing the tower's new name.

Getting city residents to embrace the change, however, may not be so easy. Read more background, along with reader comments, in this morning's USA Today.

4 New Members to Stinson Brand Innovation Team

At STINSON Brand Innovation, we're proud to announce the addition of four new innovators to our a global health, science, and technology brand team.

Jairaj Mashru, account executive, brings a wealth of knowledge, creative energy, innovation techniques, and a strong global mindset.


Layne Shapiro, account executive, will employ her skills in client service to augment our account management and execute new ideas for our brands.


Robb Hughes, finance manager, has quickly taken a lead role with STINSON’s project management system, SC3AN.


Brian Stinson, design studio assistant, is applying his digital media skills on various projects.


In addition to the new hires, STINSON Brand Innovation welcomes three interns to our Chicago office for the summer. Norah Tang, graduate student at University of Illinois Chicago, Katelyn Phillips, senior at University of Illinois, and Kayte Curtis, senior at University of Idaho.


Read more about them and other company updates.

Even video games have stories

As I've been doing research for my new N-of-8 book, I've also been finding examples of storytelling in unique media.

Consider these two popular games and the story lines they weave.

Grand Theft Auto is an award-winning video game series created by Dave Jones, later by Dan Houser and Sam Houser, with game designer Zachary Clarke and published by Rockstar Games.

The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, adventure, driving, and occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements. It has created controversy because of its adult nature and violent themes. The series focuses around many different protagonists who attempt to rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld, although their motives for doing so vary in each game. The antagonists are commonly characters who have betrayed the protagonist or their organization, or who has the most impact impeding their progress.

The stories began in 1997 and have been extended across 9 stand-alone games to date with more planned for the future.

Another example is the multi-player online game City of Heroes that offers a different kind of story formula. According to its website, it is “set in a fantastic world filled with awe-inspiring Heroes and bone-chilling Villains. Countless adventures await you on the streets of Paragon City and the inside the evil empire that is the Rogue Isles.”

The story section gives you a taste of what awaits you inside the world of City of Heroes. You can re-live the Rikti Invasion, meet some of the legends you may find yourself fighting (or fighting beside), and even take a peek into Ghost Widow's most personal thoughts.

And here’s a major difference -- if you feel inspired, you can share your ideas with the game producers by submitting your own City of Heroes fiction using the “Fan Submissions” feature.

2 great song lyrics that inspire

I’m often inspired by great song lyrics that help tell a story.

One of my favorites is "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" which first appeared on The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul.

"I once had a girl,
or should I say, she once had me."

It is one of several songs on the album referring to an antagonistic relationship with a woman. When asked about the meaning of the lyrics, producer George Martin answered, “My wife is going to give me a hard time for saying this. It was one of John's indiscretions. I remember we were sitting at the veranda outside our hotel rooms in St. Moritz and John was playing at his guitar and working out the text. He felt that Cynthia had tricked him to marry her.” Martin referred to the words as "a very bitter little story."

The song is a lilting acoustic ballad featuring Lennon's lead vocal, signature McCartney harmonies in the middle, as well as the first use of the sitar by a rock band, of course played by George Harrison. The exotic instrumentation and oblique lyric represented one of the first indications to fans of the expanding musical storytelling and experimental approach the group was adopting.

Another favorite song lyric is from Jackson Browne’s “Fountain of Sorrow.” He writes in the opening line,

“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you.”

In both these examples, it’s the twist of the meaning and perspective that makes the lyric so memorable.

Building connections that can weather the storm

In the June issue of PRWeek, Maril MacDonald of Chicago's Gagen MacDonald Communications offers her view on the forces that are reshaping today’s communications landscape — and her position on how our profession must evolve to answer these challenges.

"We’ve all seen, heard, and probably experienced lessons of the last decade. We know that the best honed talking points can’t prevent the reality of a damaging YouTube video," MacDonald wrote. "We know that seamless press conferences can’t prevent a disgruntled former employee’s blog. And we know that no “all employee” email can eliminate the threats of web-spread innuendo or the rants of a cable TV pundit. In essence, we’ve lost a great deal of our ability to control “the message.”

So what can we do?

"We cannot control what our employees and customers hear about us. Each day, they are besieged by dizzying torrents of information. These torrents threaten our reputations and our brands." So MacDonald advises, "In this stormy climate, we need to focus on stimulating durable emotional connections with our key constituents. Emotional connections are forged by experiences — they are visceral, rather than cognitive in nature."

MacDonald concludes, "As Corporate Communications leaders, internal communications practitioners, PR professionals or anywhere in between, our focus needs to be less on what our audiences hear and when they hear it: it needs to be on what defines their experience with us. Future success is not about message dissemination — that market is quickly saturating. Future success is about building connections that can weather the storm. The question can’t just be 'what do we want them to know?' It has to be just as much about what we want them to feel."

We at Stinson Brand Innovation agree — that attitude is an exponential factor in the success of a brand.

(Thanks to John Bock of Gagen MacDonald for sharing this article with us.)

10 Top Most Important Musical Innovations of the last 50 years

The Walkman, the clunky portable cassette player, has been named the best musical invention of the last 50 years by T3, a leading gadget magazine.

1. Sony Walkman
2. MP3 format
3. Apple iPod 1st Generation
4. CD
5. Napster
6. Dolby
7. DAB radio
8. Boombox
9. Sonos Multi-Room Music System
10. Panasonic Technics DJ deck

Click here to see the images and read the details.

Why “transmedia storytelling” is future of biz -- studios creating mythologies, multimedia worlds

Now that the franchise has replaced the blockbuster as Hollywood's holy grail, a new tool has emerged to help those who want to extend film and TV properties across multiple platforms.

This according to an Peter Caranicas writing in the June 26 issue of VARIETY.

The tool -- transmedia storytelling -- is capable of performing such feats as the recent revival of the Batman franchise, which helped propel "The Dark Knight" to the second-highest box office numbers in history, after "Titanic."

"They resurrected a dusty old brand that ran into trouble in the early '90s," says Jeff Gomez, co-founder of Starlight Runner Entertainment, which specializes in applying the transmedia approach to studio tentpoles. "The filmmakers were able to go back to the essentials -- the true, deep conflict that the character faces -- and they managed to make it resonant with our current conflicts as a society."

Transmedia takes the concept of the bible (a document containing backstory information that film and TV writers rely on for building plots and characters) to an extensive new level.

The idea of developing a piece of intellectual property in a consistent manner across multiple media platforms was pioneered in its modern form by George Lucas, who turned his first "Star Wars" film into five more features, multiple TV shows, a panoply of books and an onslaught of toys and games. The feature films alone have generated a cumulative worldwide box office of more than $4 billion.

And today, as the industry struggles to maximize audiences and revenues, many producers consider transmedia a key to extending franchises across the additional platforms that have emerged in the three decades since the first "Star Wars" film.

"I grew up on 'Star Wars' and experimented with that stuff on my shows. It helped build a loyal fan base, connect with them beyond primetime and reach them in other parts of their lives," says Jesse Alexander, co-exec producer on "Lost" and "Heroes," and exec producer on NBC's 2010-debuting skein "Day One."

For "Day One," an hour long drama set in the aftermath of an unspecified event that destroys the global infrastructure, Alexander says he's working with NBC Universal to develop ancillaries like a comicbook, a prequel novel and online content to be available on or before the show's debut. "It helps to build out the franchise at launch," he says.

"People are realizing that this kind of concerted implementation is one of the most powerful ways to convey messages," says Gomez, who worked with Disney on "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Tron," and with Fox on James Cameron's "Avatar." "For them, as for most of our clients, we make sure the universe of the film maintains its integrity as it's expanded and implemented across multiple platforms."

Starlight Runner typically got involved with projects toward the end of their development, but more recently has been jumping aboard at an earlier stage, Gomez says. And producers are building the costs of creating a transmedia plan into the production budget rather than leaving it as an afterthought paid for by the marketing division.

Starlight Runner was founded in 2000 and has built a client list that includes Acclaim Entertainment, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Showtime and Hasbro.

Starlight Runner creates "megabibles and mythologies" contained in oversized binders full of images, chronologies, storylines, character profiles and descriptions of such details as geography, vehicles and weapons. "We teach the studio, other divisions of its parent company and its licensors how to bring these characters to life in a way that's true to the original platform."

"We always try to extend a property to other experiences," says the exec. To do that, he adds, it's important to "look at what the essence of the property is, what people are responding to, and re-create that in other ways."

Another believer in the transmedia concept, scribe Danny Bilson, who's steering production and marketing at vidgame publisher THQ, takes as his mantra the old Microsoft advertising slogan "Where do you want to go today?" "That's different from 'What do you want to watch?'" he notes.

3 basic elements of a personal brand story (and the basis for your own N-of-8 personal brand development)

Purpose, truth and action are three basic elements of a brand story. Beyond brands, these are three fundamentals of a personal story, too.

So as our teams at Stinson Brand Innovation are working on several new N-of-8^® brand story development projects these days, it’s also a good time to analyze our own stories.

Let’s take a close look at these three elements:

1. Purpose is the thing in your life you will fight for. It is the ground you will defend at any cost. Purpose is not the same as “incentive.” Rather, it’s the engine behind it. It’s why you have energy for some things and not for others.
2. Truth means your story should conform to known facts. Ask if your personal story is a work of fantasy, a lie you tell yourself, or reflects your biases and prejudices. Maybe you’re sidestepping parts of the story that are obviously untrue because they’re just too painful to confront.
3. Action is to engage, to achieve extraordinary depth. It’s more about energy than just time. The difference between full engagement and multitasking is not incremental. With the one-foot-in, one-foot-out level of engagement characteristic of multi-tasking, a startling number of things, all relatively inconsequential, get achieved in a short time. Consider this quote: “A distracted artist will not produce anything of real worth. An entrepreneur with scattered thoughts will not come up with solutions superior to the competition’s.”

So all good stories must have purpose, truth and action.

Here are several questions to answer when creating an energizing story for your personal brand.

Purpose

• What is my ultimate purpose? (Or, what is my company’s ultimate mission?)
• What am I living/working for?
• What is my defining principle and goal?
• What makes me do what I do?
• What is the one thing I would do, even if I had to walk through fire?
• What would I work for, even if there were no pay?
• How do I want to be remembered?

Truth

• Is the story I’m telling true?
• Is this truly my story, or is it what I believe it should be?
• Is it grounded in objective reality?
• What assumptions am I making, and are any of them faulty?
• What am I white-washing to make myself look better?
• Is my private voice in synch with my public voice?

Action

• What actions will I now take to make things better?
• Which habits do I need to eliminate?
• Which habits should I begin to breed?
• Am I an observer or a participator?
• Are my actions filled with hope — the belief I will succeed and that the change I seek is realistically within my grasp?
• Does this story inspire or influence others into action?

In fact, why not convene your own N-of-8^® personal brand development group with trusted friends, family, or colleagues to help shape your story.

3 Trends in Pharma Branding Over the Next Five Years -- STINSON Brand Innovation, Inc. Releases White Paper

We are releasing our latest white paper titled, "A Look in the Crystal Ball: 3 Trends in Pharma Branding that will Impact the Industry Over the Next Five Years." This white paper is available for immediate free download on our website. Click here for your free download.

When considering the constant development of technology and the advancements of communication that is affecting every industry today, we wondered how it is affecting the pharma industry.

The three ideas we focus on in this white paper include:

1. Mobile branding: Due to the explosion of mobile communications, brand media must now offer healthcare professionals highly personalized and relevant information when and where they need it.
2. Growth of patient content: Health 2.0 (a subset of Web 2.0) has become a driving force in the further evolution towards customer-centric care--collaboration between patients, as well as between patients and their caregivers.
3. The experience of the brand and marketing as a service: The relationship between doctors and drug reps has changed—and it may never be the same again.

Staying ahead of the game is a challenge for every brand innovator. "A Look in the Crystal Ball" is a white paper to stir advanced thinking into the future of pharma branding and highlight various ways to communicate a brand through popular social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

This is our ninth white paper to be published by STINSON Brand Innovation on topics ranging from brand strategy to brand experiences. They are all available for free download on our website. Click here for free downloads of any of our white papers.

Pelican Inn, on the way to Stinson Beach

A couple of weeks ago, Jenny and I took a trip to Stinson Beach, California, for the famous Dipsea Race.

What a treat to stay at the Pelican Inn, that we’ve driven past many times on the way to Stinson Beach. Small rooms, but charming indeed, as each room has its own romantic antique décor. The owners and staff are quite friendly.


We met friends for a glass of wine in the private den for guests. Then, we all enjoyed dinner in the authentically British pub, with low-beamed ceilings, a giant hearth, lagers, fish and chips, bangers and mash, and heavy picnic-type, shared tables.

The next morning, we hiked around the Muir Woods trails and came back for a full breakfast in the garden patio.



Another evening, we stopped in the restaurant late for coffee and dessert, while Brian Wallace performed in front of the fireplace. He played his grandfather's viola, a sarode (a form of lute featured at the court of Akbar in the 16th century), a saxaphlute (similar to an old English sackbut guitar), a drum, and a bamboo flute.

The added benefit of this location is Muir Beach which is at the end of the road. And the Green Gulch Farm is just down the path.


 

Stinson Beach on Dwellable

1963 Corvairs – a car brand that brings back memories

Also on the 4th, we took a drive to the past – the classic and muscle car show in Middleton, Idaho. It was a real treat to see two 1963 Corvairs, just like my daddy drove when I was a toddler.



Thanks to Brenda and Dennis Stephenson for sharing a look at their cars. They are also the driving force behind the Boise Basin Corvair Club. Click here to check out their site.

6990 feet, 43.754ºN, 116.100ºW – coordinates of our hike on Shafer Butte

On the 4th holiday, Jenny and I took a short hike up Shafer Butte, in the mountains above Boise (near the Bogus Basin Resort for skiing in winter). We enjoyed the great views and wild flowers along the Mores Mountain trails.




Read about the area mountains in this book preview of Idaho, a Climbing Guide by Tom Lopez.

The family doctor: a remedy for healthcare costs?

The primary care doctor is gaining new respect in Washington.

Battles may be breaking out over the various healthcare bills emerging from Congress, but reformers agree that general practitioners should be given a central role in uniting the fragmented U.S. medical system.

This according to an article in BusinessWeek.

This vision has a name: the "patient-centered medical home." The "home" is the office of a primary care doctor where patients would go for most of their medical needs. This medical home may sound like the "gatekeeper" model of the 1990s, a managed-care creation that was all about holding down costs. But advocates say the new concept is designed to help patients, not insurers. It's more like doctoring 1950s-style, when a Marcus Welby figure handled all the family's medical needs. This time it's juiced up with digital technology.

It also represents a way to streamline a disorganized and wasteful system that chews up a crippling 18% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That burden is felt particularly by private industry, which covers 60% of the nation's insured. Since most businesses try to ferret out waste and disorganization in their own operations, the medical home is a concept they can embrace in good conscience.

The current practice of medicine in the U.S. is a long way from this model.

• Only 27% of physician practices come close to qualifying as a medical home;
• Medicare and other insurers pay doctors on a fee-for-service basis that rewards quantity of care over quality; and
• There are no reimbursements for discussing diabetes management with a patient or talking over a case with a specialist.

It is tough for many doctors to focus on coordinated care when there is no mechanism to pay them for their time. A nationwide switch to medical homes is also constrained by an extreme shortage of primary care physicians, again because of the economics. Medicare reimburses primary care at a lower rate than any other specialty, so only 17% of medical graduates choose to enter the field.

The efficiencies came from relying on a team approach, where nurses take on a lot of the record keeping once left to the doctor.

Click here to read the full BusinessWeek article and watch an interview with the author.

Is there an innovation that could make it feasible to have many more "patient-centered medical homes?”

Could companies and/or other organizations even sponsor them?

I welcome your comments.

What Pharma can learn from Pringles

Last week was the Cannes Advertising Festival. It's the Oscars of the ad world with awards given out in many different categories, including e-marketing. Its Cyber awards represent the best of the best in digital marketing in every industry. The digital agency for Pringles, Bridge Worldwide, created a banner ad (yes, banner ad) that won a Gold Cyber Lion award.

Read what Jonathan Richman, director of business development at Bridge Worldwide, thinks about how a Pringles banner ad can tell us something about digital marketing in pharma and healthcare. Click here to read his blog post.

Roche drops PhRMA; moves to BIO -- are they a "maverick?"

I noted with interest on Tuesday that Hoffman-La Roche plans to drop its membership in the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), the leading US industry association lobbying for pharma interests in Washington and beyond. Likewise, the Financial Times is reporting the company also has plans to drop its membership in the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).

Instead, as part of its take-over of Genentech, Roche says in the US it will join the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO).

“Genentech and Roche believe BIO’s purpose is closely aligned with the direction of the new company and, therefore, can represent the company’s interest in Washington,” spokeswoman Darian Wilson said in a company statement released last week.

The New Jersey newspaper Star-Ledger quite rightly painted the move as an effort by Roche to sever its ties to Big Pharma.

It is a defection whose importance is made clear by the efforts put forth by PhRMA to keep Roche onboard. Billy Tauzin, president and CEO of PhRMA, told the Star-Ledger that the group sent it chairman, AstraZeneca CEO David Brennan, to Roche’s headquarters in Basel to make a personal appeal to Severin Schwan, Roche’s chief. But in the end, Tauzin says, the Genentech forces, who “feel they are different,” won out.

But attempting to be different than the rest of Big Pharma may make sense if you’re Roche – or any other company looking to survive and thrive in the reality that is today’s pharma marketplace. Let’s face it; the industry’s not terribly popular (deserved or not) with consumers, governments, activists groups… and the list goes on.

In her "Eye for Pharma" blog, Lisa Roner liken Roche’s move to the strategies Southwest Airlines has employed over the years to set itself apart from the rest of the US airline industry. Southwest, arguably the most successful US airline now or ever, has built its business on being different, bucking the “group think,” stick-together-as-we-push-ourselves-over-a-cliff mentality embraced by all the other airlines.

Roner points out that when everyone else in the US airline industry rushes to raise fares and tries to one-up each other on who can charge more, Southwest lowers theirs. When the industry suddenly decided that charging exorbitant fees for carrying checked passenger baggage somehow made for smart strategy, Southwest said not us. They fly out of alternate airports, run local “shuttle” type flights and do a whole host of other things the rest of the US airline industry would tell you amount to flirting with certain death.

But Southwest remains the most profitable, stable and highly respected airline in the country – precisely because they are not like the others.

Roche’s move to distance itself from the Big Pharma pack is, in some industry watchers' opinions, is an incredibly smart one if they leverage it well. It’s a unique opportunity for Roche to paint its newly merged company as a different breed of pharma, with different priorities and commitments to its stakeholders. It’s the ultimate opportunity to pull a “Southwest” and break free from the lemming mentality that so often seems to rule pharma.

Building connections that can weather the storm

In the June issue of PRWeek, Maril MacDonald of Chicago's Gagen MacDonald Communications offers her view on the forces that are reshaping today’s communications landscape -- and her position on how our profession must evolve to answer these challenges.

"We’ve all seen, heard, and probably experienced lessons of the last decade. We know that the best honed talking points can’t prevent the reality of a damaging YouTube video," MacDonald wrote. "We know that seamless press conferences can’t prevent a disgruntled former employee’s blog. And we know that no “all employee” email can eliminate the threats of web-spread innuendo or the rants of a cable TV pundit. In essence, we’ve lost a great deal of our ability to control “the message.”

So what can we do?

"We cannot control what our employees and customers hear about us. Each day, they are besieged by dizzying torrents of information. These torrents threaten our reputations and our brands." So MacDonald advises, "In this stormy climate, we need to focus on stimulating durable emotional connections with our key constituents. Emotional connections are forged by experiences — they are visceral, rather than cognitive in nature."

MacDonald concludes, "As Corporate Communications leaders, internal communications practitioners, PR professionals or anywhere in between, our focus needs to be less on what our audiences hear and when they hear it: it needs to be on what defines their experience with us. Future success is not about message dissemination — that market is quickly saturating. Future success is about building connections that can weather the storm. The question can’t just be 'what do we want them to know?' It has to be just as much about what we want them to feel."

We at Stinson Brand Innovation agree -- that attitude is an exponential factor in the success of a brand.

(Thanks to John Bock of Gagen MacDonald for sharing this article with us.)

Innovation in mass transit

Chicago-based Commuter Advertising is doing its part to aid the nationwide mass transit budget crisis by delivering patented, short-form audio advertisements between stop announcements on buses and trains.

For every 10 stops, commuters listen to one 10-second ad that plays over the PA system and view text scrolls on LED screens. Ads are tailored to specific stops so that the information is relevant to the riders.

Commuter Advertising uses existing equipment so there is no cost to mass transit, and ad profits are shared. This innovative concept presents a way for mass transit companies to prevent layoffs, service cuts, and fare increases.

On April 30, the Champaign-Urbana Metro Transit District became the first system in Illinois to adopt Computer Advertising technology, doubling the company's reach to 21 million riders.

12 workplace phrases you probably don't know...but should

It's more than industry jargon - it's the vocabulary of the workplace. And, you had better learn to communicate using the latest buzzwords and TLAs (three-letter abbreviations).

Christine Lambden and Casey Conner, authors of "Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants," have compiled a list of 12 of the hottest workplace phrases that everyone should know:

1. Boil the ocean: the scope is too big to do in one project.
2. Drink the Kool-Aid: to enthusiastically perform a task or follow a leader without knowing how this may affect you or to buy the "company line."
3. Going native: This is what happens when a consultant stops acting like a consultant and starts thinking he is part of the client organization.
4. Greenfield instance: When a brand-new application is installed, it is a "greenfield instance" until the consultants and programmers go in and start messing it up with configurations and code changes.
5. Holistic: A big-picture view or a solution that includes upstream and downstream impacts. Whatever it means, it's a great consulting word and we use it a lot.
6. Paradigm: The perspective or view you have of a situation.
7. Running in parallel: Processing normal operating data through two systems simultaneously to compare performance and output.
8. Straw man: First draft of a solution or proposal intended to provoke discussion. It is an object, document, person or argument that temporarily stands in for and is intended to be "knocked down" by something more substantial.
9. Talking to the dog: Thinking it through by talking it through out loud.
10. Use case: A particular circumstance or situation in which the solution would be used.
11. White paper: An authoritative report or guide published to share technical or business information, particularly related to solving common problems.
12. Wireframe: Simple pictures that show a proposed user interface.

Christine Lambden and Casey Conner teach consulting and interviewing skills workshops and seminars around the world. After a combined total of more than 30 years in the consulting industry, they now bring their accumulated wisdom to business professionals in various industries. For complete bios, visit www.ConsultantingStance.com/about.htm.

Creative ads - inspiration for designers

Recently, I ran across a collection of some 60+ ads that exemplify creativity and originality. These are not your typical ads that you find in everyday media - they remain imprinted in the minds of the viewers.







If you would like to view the entire collection, go to WebAir blog.

Personalized medicine continues to advance -- new cancer treatment offerings from Champions Biotechnology

A couple of years ago, we at Stinson Brand Innovation were developing a Strategic GPS^® for a client's new diagnostic instrument. A pivotal part of the insight was a vision of "personalized therapy." And we're seeing it come to reality more and more every day.

Champions Biotechnology, a company offering personalized cancer data for patients and physicians, has launched a new website: www.personalizedcancertreatment.com. The website details Champions' personalized treatment offerings for cancer patients and their physicians, including tumorgrafts, vaccines and expert oncology panels – all catering to individual cancer patients.


“Champions offers a more precise approach to cancer treatment, because every patient's cancer is unique,” said Doug Burkett, president of Champions Biotechnology, in a statement. “In partnership with one's physician, Champions optimizes a given treatment plan's potential for success and maximizes the patient's most precious resource: time.” The personalized tumorgraft, for example, uses a sample of the patient's living tumor in order to test treatment options “through simultaneous evaluation of the effectiveness of numerous anti-cancer drugs.”

The company is currently developing several of its own oncology products, but also has partnered with other biotechs including Centocor, ImClone, Concordia Pharmaceuticals and Gradalis. Personalized vaccines utilize tumorgrafts to predict a patient's immune system response to a given treatment.

If you're seeing other examples of personalized medicine, please share them in the comments below.

115th anniversary of the modern Olympic Movement - celebrate "Olympic Day" in Chicago!

This year marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of the modern Olympic Movement. Each year on June 23, the world honors the enduring Olympic spirit by staging events and celebrations. The entire country has rallied around Chicago’s bid and the prospect of bringing the Games back to the U.S. in 2016.

Nearly 150 U.S. cities will be showing their support for the Movement with festivities featuring athletic events and appearances by Olympians and Paralympians.

To view details about Olympic Day events in Chicago, click here.

• Youth Fun Runs
• Two 3-Mile Fun Runs
• Celebration Party @ North Avenue Beach - Free Concert by the Freddy Jones Band and Elevation
• Olympic Day @ White Sox - Dodgers Game

3 great case studies from Tokyo agency Hakuhodo

When we were in Tokyo recently, we had the opportunity to visit an agency named Hakuhodo. Their principal and creative director, Kentaro Kimura, share with us 3 great case studies. You can click on each one to view the video.

4 criteria and 2 steps to visualize and affirm your desired outcomes: a comprehensive approach from Jack Canfield

You have an awesome power that most of us have never been taught to use effectively.

Elite athletes use it. The super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields now use it. That power is called visualization. The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams, goals and ambitions.

Recently, Jack Canfield shared with me 4 things accomplished by the visualization of your goals and desires:

1. It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.
2. It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.
3. It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.
4. It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.

Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine -- in as vivid detail as you can -- what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.

Mental Rehearsal

Athletes call this visualization process "mental rehearsal," and they have been using it since the 1960s when we learned about it from the Russians.

All you have to do is set aside a few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the times you are most relaxed.

Go through the following three steps recommended by Jack:

STEP 1. Imagine sitting in a movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing -- traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage in this activity.

STEP 2. Get out of your chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes. This is called an "embodied image" rather than a "distant image." It will deepen the impact of the experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.

STEP 3. Finally, walk back out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine that each tiny piece -- just like a hologram -- contains the full picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It's like one of those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the same channel.

When you have finished this process -- it should take less than five minutes -- you can open your eyes and go about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.

Create Goal Pictures

Another powerful technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture.

With today's technology, you can make even more convincing images using your computer. I personally use Vision Board to see my goals in action.

Create a Visual Picture and an Affirmation for Each Goal

We recommend that you find or create a picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual representation for every goal you have -- financial, career, recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and so on.

When Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul^® book, they took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it into the computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the "Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous" category. They printed several copies and hung them up around their office. Less than two years later, their book was the number one book in that category and stayed there for over a year!

Index Cards

My wife Jenny and I practice a similar discipline every day. We have a list of about 30-40 goals we are currently working on. We write each goal on a 3x5 index card and keep those cards near our bed and take them with us when we travel. Each morning and each night we go through the stack of cards, one at a time, read the card, close our eyes, see the completion of that goal in its perfect desired state for about 15 seconds, open our eyes and repeat the process with the next card.

Use Affirmations to Support Your Visualization

An affirmation is a statement that evokes not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want. Here's an example of an affirmation:

I am happily vacationing 2 months out of the year in a tropical paradise, and working just four days a week owning my own business.

Repeating an affirmation several times a day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen.

Expect Results

Through writing down your goals, using the power of visualization and repeating your affirmations, you can achieve amazing results.

Visualization and affirmations allow you to change your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about the most important person in your life -- YOU! They allow you to harness the 18 billion brain cells in your brain and get them all working in a singular and purposeful direction.

Your subconscious will become engaged in a process that transforms you forever. The process is invisible and doesn't take a long time. It just happens over time, as long as you put in the time to visualize and affirm, surround yourself with positive people, read uplifting books and listen to audio programs that flood your mind with positive, life-affirming messages.

If you would like a step-by-step, comprehensive approach for defining your goals, creating affirmations for them and how to create a powerful visual support system, take a look at Jack Canfield's Dream Big Collection... it contains a everything you need -- just add your dreams!

Repeat your affirmations every morning and night for a month and they will become an automatic part of your thinking... woven into the very fabric of your being.

Are you "stuck" in this area?
Send Jack your most pressing question about this topic, then join him for his monthly "Ask Jack Canfield" Tele-Clinic. www.AskJackCanfield.com

37 years in the making – “a genuinely competitive, fair, and honest election in Lebanon” reports President Carter and his delegation

I received this letter from President Jimmy Carter today reporting on the efforts in the Middle East. Because many of you know of our support of the Carter Center’s efforts, I wanted to share it with you.

Dear Mark,

Last Sunday, something happened in Lebanon for the first time in 37 years: the nation held a genuinely competitive, fair, and honest election.

As millions of Lebanese citizens went to the polls to take a stand for democracy, I was there with a delegation of 60 observers from The Carter Center to provide an independent assessment of the vote.

Our team has created a video capturing the Carter Center’s work in Lebanon on Election Day to show you what it was like for us on the ground. After several grueling days of work, David Carroll, director of the Carter Center's Democracy Program, took time out to record this video for you from the region.

Please watch the video and pass it along to everyone you know who is interested in democracy in the Middle East.


As the election proceeded, all of us from The Carter Center were encouraged by what we saw.

Turnout was very high — especially among women — and there were few problems with the election administration. Crucially, the opposition parties accepted the results of the vote almost immediately.

This went a long way toward bolstering the credibility of the election.

But there is still progress that can be made. For example, there are no pre-printed ballots, so often voters use ballots distributed by political parties — undermining the secrecy of the vote. And despite the high turnout among women, Lebanon can do more to create opportunities for women to run for office.

After our work in was Lebanon was finished, I traveled across the Middle East to help build on the momentum of last week's successful election. I visited Syria, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza to help advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Click here to read my full trip report.

I hope you'll stay tuned for future updates about Carter Center efforts to spread peace and democracy throughout the world.

Thank you for all your support.

Sincerely,

President Jimmy Carter

San Diego's bio-pharma hub: where new ideas are emerging

We're always looking for more inspiration in our mission to accelerate
the adoption of new medical treatments.

So on a recent trip to San Diego, Melanie and I captured some photos of
biomedical research and education centers where scientists are working
to advance human health.









The centers are exploring new ideas in small molecules, genomics,
bioinformatics, high throughput screening, and structural biology. Their
efforts further translate the exciting discoveries being made every day
in laboratories into improved diagnostic and treatment technologies that
benefit all patients.

There are many examples of academia and industry joining as partners
with complementary expertise -- and the common goal of addressing unmet
medical needs. San Diego has an established history of partnerships that
facilitate the development of drugs and technologies based on research
discoveries. This approach set the foundation for San Diego's emergence
as a global biotechnology and pharmaceutical hub.

We at Stinson Brand Innovation are pleased to be working with many
companies in the region to support their efforts.

Healthcare marketing: Shifting responsibilities

Healthcare marketing leaders were asked to compare their responsibilities now with what they predicted would be their responsibilities three years from now. They predicted a shift from market research, PR, and advertising, toward patient experience, physician relations, and business strategy.

We agree, and see with so many healthcare brands, that the customer experience will continue to be of paramount focus.

If you would like to read our white paper on brand experience, click here to download it.

11:15am Obama live from Chicago today -- ReachMD XM160 to broadcast President's major health care speech to physicians

I thought you all would want to know that ReachMD is going to be broadcasting President Obama's health care speech LIVE today.

The speech to America's physicians starts at 11:15am CT.

XM subscribers are invited to tune in to the President's address on ReachMD XM160.

If you are not a subscriber to XM, you can listen to the ReachMD broadcast of the President's speech online at www.reachmd.com

ReachMD is covering this event live from the convention floor at the American Medical Association annual meeting. ReachMD will also have extensive post-speech interviews and reaction by physicians and other medical professionals to the speech.

Procedure Growth

The February 2009 "Fact File" in Health Leaders magazine focused on the results of an Intensive Care survey conducted in conjunction with Thomson Reuters, a Fact File partner.

The ICU is one of the most complex settings in a hospital, involving many specialists who offer a wide spectrum of complex care to critically ill patients. While cardiology and general surgery continue to top the list of ICU discharges, other kinds of procedures are seeing high growth in the critical care arena.

We were intrigued to find that sleep studies was projected to be the #1 high-volume intensive care procedure. The graph below shows sleep studies with above average growth rates performed by critical care medicine specialists.

Our client Total Sleep is part of this growing market.

Video Games to Treat Cancer?

Not quite a treatment perhaps, but they do help fight it.

Two years ago HopeLab, a non-for-profit, released Re-Mission, a shooter game in which players destroy cancer cells. Pam Omidyar, a tech enthusiast with a background in immunology, came up with idea to get cancer-afflicted teens to stick to their meds.


Just this past summer clinical evidence was published showing that the game actually works. Patients who played for at least an hour a week were more likely to follow their drug regimen.

This is a breakthrough in innovation. Video games could possibly be applied to other diseases and conditions.

1st new MOA for hypertension in a decade – and gold prize winner of Technology Innovation Award

While I was in the Philippines recently, Novartis publicized its breakthrough drug Aliskiren that acts at the root of hypertension. According to the report in the Philippine Star:

Doctors have long known that a complex hormone system plays an important role in blood pressure control and is, in fact, the target of several blood pressure-lowering drugs. However, currently available medications act at later stages of this vital blood pressure-regulating process.

After over a decade that saw no new anti-hypertension medication being launched in the market, Swiss research-based healthcare company Novartis AG has developed a breakthrough drug that controls hypertension by blocking a kidney enzyme that can trigger high blood pressure (hypertension), a silent killer that afflicts about seven million Filipinos and nearly a billion people worldwide.

Aliskiren is the first and only high blood pressure medication that inhibits renin, a kidney enzyme associated with the regulation of blood pressure. Unlike other available high blood pressure medications, aliskiren acts at the beginning of the blood pressure-regulating process.

“Renin plays a key role in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), a hormone system that regulates blood pressure and fluid balance,” said Dr. Agnes Mejia, a respected kidney specialist and chairman of the Department of Medicine of the University of the Philippines- College of Medicine.

"The RAAS is activated when blood pressure is low, prompting the kidneys to secrete renin," Mejia said.

Renin stimulates the production of angiotensin, a protein in the blood that causes blood vessels to narrow (constrict), resulting in increased blood pressure.

Angiotensin also stimulates the secretion of the hormone aldosterone which causes the kidneys to retain sodium and water. This increases the volume of fluid in the body, which also increases blood pressure.

“The RAAS is crucial in maintaining optimal circulation but its over-activity causes hypertension. A direct renin inhibitor such as aliskiren can help address the problem at its root,” Mejia said.

Mejia spoke on the kidneys’ role in high blood pressure and hypertension management during a satellite symposium organized by Novartis Philippines in connection with the recently concluded 14th Joint Annual Convention of the Philippine Lipid and Atherosclerosis Society (PLAS) and Philippine Society of Hypertension (PSH).

Aliskiren is approved for the treatment of hypertension by the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and the Bureau of Food and Drugs. Considered by many cardiovascular experts as a breakthrough product, aliskiren was awarded the gold winner of the Wall Street Journal’s Technology Innovation Award for 2007 and declared by Med Ad News as the 2007 Best New Medicine in the US.

Aliskiren is now approved in more than 57 countries. It is a prescription product and should only be taken under a doctor’s supervision.

7 key highlights of “Building the Optimal Service Model” – how to drive business by creating the right brand experiences with physicians customers

Recently, one of our project managers, Brandy Gonsoulin, participated in a seminar with more than 800 other industry colleagues on “Building the Optimal Service Model: Creating the Right Physician Experiences to Drive Business.”

The presentation was conducted by TNS Healthcare.

Because Brandy found the program to be a valuable guide to helping design and execute effective service models that meet physician needs — and drive improved brand performance in the market — I’m pleased to share the slides for references to readers of our blog.

As you will read, the presentation shares many compelling insights. They derived from the results of TNS Healthcare’s latest research with 1,500+ GPs across the US and EU on the doctors' experience preferences and ratings of 17 Pharma companies on their reps, relationships, and services. As you will see, the findings reveal a wealth of new challenges and fresh opportunities.

The three presenters of “Building the Optimal Service Model: Creating the Right Physician Experiences to Drive Business” were from TNS Healthcare...

• Mark Sales, Global Practice Leader, Stakeholder Management. His topic was “Listening to Your Customers: Where Doctors See Change and What They Want From Your Reps”
• Martin Silverman, Senior Vice President and Practice Leader, Sales Force Effectiveness. He reviewed the “Global Sales Force Effectiveness: 2009 Survey Results”
• Andrew Brana, Senior Global Consultant, Sales Performance Optimization. He summarized the “Service Model Report Card: How Physicians Rate Companies on Service Model Delivery”

The seven key highlights of the seminar are:

1. Physicians continue to place strong value on sales reps’ skills; diverse set of specific sales rep behaviors sought
2. Physician education and information remains highly valued, and is increasingly a sales driver. Different information access channels show varying levels of interest.
3. Patient, practice and Internet services have significant interest in certain markets.
4. Novartis maintains overall performance lead, but still closely followed by competitors like Pfizer, Merck, AZ, Sanofi and GSK. Tighter US race, with Merck leading on overall service-mix quality.
5. Relationship quality trends down in US and UK, up in Spain, still challenging in UK and France
6. High market resistance continues in Europe and increased into negative levels in US
7. Alignment between favorable company market resistance situation and sales performance

The sales performance survey design was drawn from TNS Healthcare’s Sales Performance Optimization (SPO) and DetailMed customer research offerings designed to optimize and monitor sales strategy performance. For more details, contact tnshealthcareinfo@tns-global.com

Or contact me to review the specifics findings and implications for your brand.

If you would like to download a pdf of the presentation, click here.

10 Reasons not to Tweet

Yesterday, I shared with you the "10 Ways to Tweet." Just as there are ways to tweet, there are also ways not to tweet. B. L. Ochman wrote a post in Ad Age entitled "Everyone's Talking About It, But Should You be Doing It?" In her article, she maintains that not all companies should be tweeting.

Here are 10 reasons why your company probably should not be tweeting:

1. You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It's a tactic, a tool, not a strategy.
2. Every tweet has to be approved by legal.
3. You plan to use Twitter for nothing but broadcasting headlines or deals.
4. You think a ghost tweeter for the president of your company is OK.
5. You are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you.
6. You think Tweeting as XYZ Corp. and using the company logo as your avatar might be a good idea.
7. You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you.
8. You want to protect your updates.
9. You plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics.
10. You think you can just jump in and start tweeting.

Ochman goes into greater detail on each reason in her article. To read the article in its entirety, click here.

10 ways to tweet

I am a follower of Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and he recently offered some great advice on how to "Create a Twitter following."

1. Follow the “smores,” or social media whores

Get a good idea of who these opinion leaders are by viewing twittercounter.com, twitterati.alltop.com and egos.alltop.com

2. Send @ messages to the smores

They probably wont’ answer you, but that’s OK. “Its not who you know. It’s who appears to know you.”

3. Create an effective avatar

Use a simple, informal, straight up mug shot.

4. Follow everyone who follows you

Some people will respond to you and everyone who follows them will see this—which is more exposure for you.

5. Always link to interesting stories and pictures

Think of yourself as a one-person StumbleUpon.

6. Establish yourself as a subject expert

That way, you’ll be interesting to some subset of people.

7. Incorporate pictures and other media

Anthing and everything works.

8. Use the right tools

Use TweetDeck on MacBook and Tweetie on iPhone, as well as Adjix and Posterous.

9. Repeat your tweets

Post your most interesting tweets three times, eight to 12 hours apart. Most people check in at about the same time everyday, so people probably won’t notice repeat tweets.

10. Ask people to follow

That’s right: Just come right out and ask them.

You can follow me on Twitter -- at you guessed it, "brandinnovator"

Top 10 most Innovative Countries

After my recent Asia trips, I’m not as surprised at the results of the study, "Top 10 most Innovative Countries" by Boston Consulting Group and the National Association of Manufacturers.

I am a little surprised at the countries that beat out the U.S. though -- we barely make it into the top 10 by coming in at #8. The study ranked 110 countries based on factors such as tax policies, education systems, infrastructure, and number of patents issued.

The complete Top 10 list is as follows:

1. Singapore
2. South Korea
3. Switzerland
4. Iceland
5. Ireland
6. Hong Kong
7. Finland
8. U.S.
9. Japan
10. Sweden

New Ideas for Growth

I love walking into my office and hearing the conversation of brainstorming employees. It means ideas and energy are flowing and innovation is at work. That’s why I really liked this story I came across in BusinessWeek.

Last year, Best Buy picked four groups of salespeople in their early 20s and 30s and asked the strangers to room together for 10 weeks in an L.A. apartment complex. They were to come up with business ideas that Best Buy could roll out quickly and cheaply. The result: A service called Best Buy Studio, which provides Web-design consulting for small businesses.

It’s the Real World of business-extreme brainstorming. As participant Jermey Sevush says, “Living together and knowing we only had 10 weeks sped up our team-building process. We voluntarily worked longer hours, talking about business models while making spaghetti.”

Other companies have caught on. Whirlpool sends eight sales reps to Benton Harbor, Michigan, to test out products in a program called Real Whirled. The more experience each rep has with the products, the better marketers they become.

I wonder -- how could this idea be applied to Pharma branding and connecting with the patient and their experiences?

6 ideas that are innovating the West

One of the great things about having our western states office in Boise is that we are exposed to new ideas and viewpoints. As the world and our country are facing economic, energy, and environmental challenges, we need innovators now more than ever.

Here's a sampling of 6 ideas that are emerging from the West and shaking things up:

1. Sci-fi Solar The curved 10-foot mirror focuses sunlight onto a steel plate about five feet away, and the steel glows bright and white - shedding sparks as if targeted by a cutting torch. Within seconds, the amplified sunlight burns a hold clean through the quarter-inch steel.
2. A New Method for Brainstorming Nathan Myhrvold calls it an "invention session." For his groups, he seeks unusual people from around the world - bioengineers, nanotechnologists, chemists, even a few artists - who "have really deep knowledge and an open mind." An average session features 5-10 people in a big room furnished with a massive secondhand table and comfortable purple and green chairs. The small size and informal atmosphere encourage friendly interaction.
3. Breaking Down Walls, With Art Inspired by a project in New York, Adam Price and his wife Dessi, invited 143 artists - ranging from teenaged graffiti artists to classical painters in their 70s - to transform an abandoned, 42-room building in one of Salt Lake City's oldest neighborhoods. After a 2-weekend public showing of the art, the building was demolished to make way for green-built apartments that included space for public art.
4. A Home for the Homeless ... on the Street Surprised by how many homeless people were not sleeping in shelters, Hollywood movie producer Peter Samuelson launched three successful charities and raised money to create a contraption he calls the EDAR (Everyone Deserves A Roof). Designed by Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa, the EDAR is shaped like a shopping cart. Made of wire and piping and wrapped with military-grade canvas, it can be filled with baggage and pushed around for day use. Then the wheels can be locked and collapsed into an EDAR in about a minute, transforming it into a raised tent to sleep in.
5. Inventing Equality for Blind People George Kersher has a sweeping vision, even though he's blind: He wants to make all printed information "accessible." Everything in print should be readily available in audio, he believes, so that the millions with impaired eyesight can "read" by using their ears. He has invented technologies and computer programs and encouraged advancements in policies that involve dozens of countries.
6. Rural Empowerment Land owners around Wheatland, Wyoming, are pooling their land and evaluating its wind resources, then putting together a marketing package to present a unified voice in bargaining with companies for a fair price. Because all the members experience construction and visual impacts, everyone gets a share in the proceeds, even those who don't end up with turbines on their land. It's a model that could avert some of the animosity around wind farms. And proponents think it can revitalize rural communities and keep farmers and ranchers on their land despite rising costs.

Click here to read the entire article in the Boise Weekly.

Running up the corporate ladder

Can the very act of running, in fact, turn you from a little chihuahua into a fierce labrador retriever and make you a big dawg in the corporate world?

Read one runner-executive's viewpoint at Runners Write - My Life As Shaped By Running.

5/20 ForwardFast teleseminar replay available – listen to learn “How to Accelerate Your Brand”

Thanks to everyone who participated in our teleseminar on Wednesday, May 20. We had clients and friends from across the country register to listen. Colleagues from Stinson Brand offices in Chicago and Boise, as well as our partner agency in Istanbul, joined the call.

To get maximum value from this training, we’ve posted a replay of “How to Accelerate Your Brand” so you can listen again. Click here to listen to the replay.


The teleseminar covered these topics:

• 6 key brand attributes in the ForwardFast^® model
• 5 things to consider when evaluating a logo
• 4 part checklist for creating your brand’s quality offering
• 4 key characteristics that define brand associations
• 10 personality characteristics you can apply to your brand
• 7 milestones to consider when developing a creative brief for a brand experience program
• 6 ways to evaluate interactive and digital branding (using the new Pepsi website as an example)

You can also share this link with a colleague who may be interested in the presentation. Again, click here to go to the replay page.