Our newest favorite is AudioNote, a notepad and voice recorder app for our iPhones and iPads. Before this amazing app was discovered deep within the App Store we were using Livescribe pens and notebooks. To be honest we thought Livescribe was the coolest thing since smart phones. It allowed us to record our meetings and notes simultaneously then review them later on, or share them with others. Yet since we are an environmentally conscious, green and 90% paperless office, we didn’t like that we had to take our notes on paper. We wanted the whole operation to be digital.

So finally one day the clouds parted and sun shined down upon AudioNote, our long sought after solution. This app allows us to synchronize notes and audio while it automatically indexes our meetings, and we can use our iPhones or iPads to do the note taking. How cool! We then realized that we could sync our wireless Apple keyboards through our Bluetooth in our iPhones to make taking notes even easier. Is this for real?! Although Livescribe was an innovative tool, we can now say good-bye to the piles of notebooks (and their high cost) along with the charging the smart pens. If you want to see how AudioNote works here is a good tutorial video.

Thanks to AudioNote we are now a 98% paperless office. All that’s left is Kleenex! So now I ask, what are your favorite cool tools and gadgets that will make your work day easier and greener? We would love to hear how they help you or if they are just plain fun!

What is branding?  Heart & Mind® Branding.

With Steve Jobs announcing he is stepping down from his role of CEO of Apple, people are speculating about what made him so powerful, so successful and so iconic. Everything from his off-the-charts intelligence, his insane attention to every detail, his intensity and his relentless micromanagement just to highlight a few.  But I’ll say it is all of these and none of these at the same time. That’s putting too much emphasis on the micro aspects of a macro human being, a total person.

There’s no doubt that Steve Jobs isn’t just the founder of Apple he is a brand unto himself. The same things that makes Apple a great brand is the same things that makes Steve Jobs a great brand. They are the three key tenants of Heart & Mind Branding: Great brands are always Genuine, Meaningful and Different.

Genuine

Too many people want to complicate the power of brands by looking at them under a microscope. The real power of a brand happens by looking through the telescope. On a grand scale, Steve Jobs is and has been since the very first Apple computer, the genuine Steve Jobs. He may have grown older as we all do and wiser and richer, but in general the Steve Job we saw in the old Apple product launch reels is not at all different from the Steve Jobs we see in the launch videos today. And its clear to anyone watching his attitudes, behaviors, delivery and passion is not an act. How many of you as entrepreneurs, how many of you as employees, as managers can say the same of yourself or your leaders? Are you genuine or are you holding back, putting on aires, trying to be someone else or matching who you are to who you are with?  Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs and that’s what makes him and his brand powerful.

Meaningful

Steve Jobs isn’t just genuine, his genuineness is meaningful to people who love technology, music, video, business, entrepreneurship and every other area of life that the products his company creates enhance. Furthermore, Steve Jobs has a way of delivering and communicating what could be just “boring technology” in a way that connects with his audiences. And he always has. His message matters to legions of followers. It also repels others who don’t connect with the genuine Steve Jobs and like any great brand, he appears okay with that. By choosing to be one thing as a brand, we by definition dismiss everything else as off brand. More things are off brand to Steve Jobs than on brand and that’s the way it should be.

Different

Clearly Steve Jobs has taken a stand on the nature and the future of technology and that stand is not just a part of who he is as a brand, but also what his company is as one too. It’s a strong stand and by that measure alone, the Steve Jobs brand is different. He owns his personna, he owns his attitude, he owns his fire. This made him a standout in a world where getting noticed was the precursor to success. I’m talking about 30 years ago, not just today. Back when Steve Jobs was nearly unknown, his uniqueness began fueling his and his company’s brand engines. He began to get noticed, as did his company’s products.

So you can look and talk about all the micro attributes of this gifted man and analyze them over too many glasses of wine. Or you can look at the whole person for what he is–a leader–who stayed true to himself and his mission, a mission that is meaningful to so many and by shear virtue of those two things, made him different from everyone else. So instead of trying to work into your daily work the small behaviors of a great man, instead look up at the great leader and find the great leader in yourself.

What is branding? Heart & Mind® Branding.

You may say you don’t need to actually know any of this stuff, after all you will hire people who do. But you can bet that having a solid technology foundation and a willingness to learn new things will help you in ways you have yet to imagine. Sure you may not actually do the work, but you can’t recommend the strategy if you don’t understand the technology and what it can do for you. You can’t be a good purchaser of services if you don’t know the language. And you can’t pull off marketing miracles if your hands are bound by your fear of technology.

Let’s start with the absolute basics.  One is old school, Microsoft Word, and one is new school, WordPress:

Microsoft Word

Believe it or not, much of your communication still happens through word processing documents. Reports & proposals – these all are part of your brand promise. If they look amateurish, that reflects on your brand.  So how do you make sure your materials don’t look like you turned your computer on and started typing? How do you make sure that professional brand look we created for you lives on beyond the brand presentation?

• Tip: Understand and learn how to use style sheets. Word actually is quite powerful when it comes to type management and page layout. I wouldn’t recommend it for laying out a brochure, but to make your reports and proposals speak volumes about your work, learn how to manage type and layout through style sheets.
• Tip: Understand how to use Word’s line leading controls and paragraph functions. This is the secret to making pages look professional. It’s more than just adding line breaks between paragraphs. You want to control the space between your lines and between your paragraphs. If you don’t understand type, and leading, you’ll have a hard time pulling off a professional brand look.
• Tip: Learn the right way to use tabs. You can drag and drop them right in the page ruler. It’s that easy. Too many people just use the auto tabbing and align their text in a space that looks “close enough.” Not good. It’s so easy to set tabs where you want them, why not do it?
• Tip: Become an expert at using tables. Word’s table function is powerful enough to handle many of the most complicated charts and even create forms.  Just mess around with it, you’ll pick it up if you let yourself make mistakes to learn.

We’ll stop there with Microsoft Word. That’s enough for you to start bringing your skill levels where you’ll need them to be effective in the digital world of communications.  Practice and see what the tools do. Use the online help to guide you when in doubt.

Let’s move on to your website.

WordPress

WordPress is another way to publish your own content. We strongly urge business owners to create their websites using the WordPress development engine because it is so powerful, scalable and easy to keep fresh. Plus you can even post blogs, edit pages, change settings, approve and reply to posts, etc. right from your iPhone, iPad or similar devices.  You’ll want a company like ours to help you with the initial website development, but once you have the site, what do you need to know?

• Tip: Understand and be familiar with image file formats. If you’re expecting to do anything in marketing, you’ll need to know the difference between a .jpg, a .bmp and an .eps file. You’ll need to be able to convert image files and compress them for online use. Learn how to upload images, crop and re-size them. Know what aspect ratio is and how to maintain it.  These are critical to working in the communications arena.
• Tip: Know where to go online for images, music and videos that you will use on your website. Begin a digital photo and video library of your own company media and tag them for easy retrieval. Keep them on your own local computers or in “the cloud” on sites like Flickr, YouTube or Vimeo.
• Tip: Master the administrator interface on your WordPress website. Our developers will set up your site so that it can be dynamic allowing you to add content continually. Learn how to add a page, how to edit a page, how to add images, embed videos, manage your navigation menus and how to categorize and tag your pages and posts for easy search.

The tips in this post are by no means all inclusive and we are not trying to turn you into a power-user in any of these areas. These are simply the basic skills we have found most lacking and most needed for keeping a brand alive. We can create the brand, but you and your team must have the basic skills needed to keep it alive and growing with quality and consistency. Watch for more posts on this subject. There’s much more to learn, but this should get you started.

Enter iPad.  iPad has its own commercial series.  They’re oddball slice-of-life spots that barely show the product or its functionality—a hallmark of the iPad spot that premiered on this year’s Academy Awards, and the wow-factor of the old iPhone commercials that left us agog and other smart phones in the dust.  Instead, there are a couple paper boys in one spot.  Two girls who have just been dumped by their boyfriends in a second and two guys with attention-starved dogs in a third.  In each case—the paper throwing, the girlfriend dumping and the dog begging—Apple shows life happening the old way, and happening the new way with the iPad.  Old way or new, all the spots are equally annoying.

So in terms of brand advertising, is iPad or Kindle the early winner in the battle of the readers?  In terms of commercials alone, it’s a draw.  Kindle keeps your attention, but doesn’t really make you feel compelled to buy the product.  And the iPad spots, hmmm… teenage girls whining about their boyfriends will trigger in many people a spontaneous mute-button response. Kind of like a gag reflex.

But Apple, smart as ever, managed to plant their brand into the hearts of their audience nevertheless, in a big, big way.  Call it a 30-minute commercial.  Or call it last week’s episode of “Modern Family.”  If you missed it, Phil’s birthday happened to be on the same day Apple released the iPad.  Most of the show was about early-adopter Phil yearning for the iPad as his birthday present, and his wife Claire trying her best to get him one.  He said it didn’t matter, but when his dream became reality, iPad in hand, Phil said it really did matter.  It mattered so much! Apple, whatever that cost you, it played brilliantly, passionately and with heart.  This is how you sell on TV (the 30-second spot is so over) and the way to sell iPads.  As of this writing… the score…iPad 1.  Kindle 0.

What is branding? Heart & Mind® Branding.