Posted on

Living up to a people-powered promise

redhatcollaborate

Much of my time over the past year has been spent in the company of Red Hat, the open source software company.

The organization is rooted in the ideals of the open source movement: collaboration, innovation, and generosity. Their brand team is doing some fun stuff to bring what they call the Red Hat Way to life through campaigns celebrating the people and teamwork that make them great. Go check out their people-powered billboard! So awesome.

While everyone I’ve met at Red Hat has been great, we work virtually and until recently I hadn’t had a chance to witness the larger culture. So I was excited to visit the Raleigh HQ for a workshop with their Global Services folks. It was a great session, full of deep insights and collaboration, but what stood out the most was how their behavior truly lived up to their values.

It was an ambitious workshop, engaging interactively with participants on 4 continents — naturally, technological obstacles kept popping up. Yet, one after another the Red Hatters jumped in to help us troubleshoot and find solutions so everyone could be included. Frankly, I’ve never seen so many proactively helpful senior staff. (Or, at least, not in the for-profit world.) They were generous, collaborative, and humble, which stands out in the world of tech.

They’re clearly doing something right in their culture, and it makes me happy to know I’m supporting such great people.

 

Posted on

2015 Highlights

One of the best things about consulting is having a variety of organizations and people to work with every year. Here are a few collaborations from 2015:

Red Hat

red-hat-180This one was a lot of fun — a “State of the Brand” analysis for open source leaders Red Hat. Teaming up with Great Monday, I did tons of market research and wrapped it all up in a visual presentation that is a resource to their brand team and a conversation-starter for executives.

Garfield Innovation Center

Kaiser Permanente’s innovation center, a longtime client, asked for help reframing their services so it’s more clear how and when to engage them. This has come up a recently with multiple clients — the architecture of products and services sounds simple enough but is truly one of the biggest stumbling blocks in communication the value of an organization.

Revolution Media

rm-workshop-180Working with Intactic, we refreshed the Revolution Media identity, starting with a workshop and ending with new messaging and a website. They now have a voice that embodies their direct, confident, no-drama culture.

Global Footprint Network

As part of a pro bono team, I spent a whole lot of this year working on positioning and messaging for Global Footprint Network, an environmental research organization. We’re not quite finished yet, but we’re very, very close and I look forward to sharing more soon.

Entrepreneurs

taiwan_180pxI’ve been advising a new finance company on marketing strategy, and had the great fortune to accompany the founder on a trip to Taiwan. It was quite an adventure!

Several purpose-driven solopreneurs also came to me this year for coaching on their strategy and story. Supporting entrepreneurs is one of the purposes I most value — there’s something about helping someone achieve their dream and build their legacy that hits me right in the feels.

Posted on

Hello Kitty, hello cuteness

hellokittybillboardOn my recent trip to Taiwan and Tokyo, the cute factor was inescapable. Buildings, restaurants, museums, you name it. Everything has a mascot. Everything has an animated character. And the queen herself, Hello Kitty, continues to reign supreme.

But of course Hello Kitty is more than a mere character. She’s a phenomenon and even a way of life, and has been for 40 years. Even guys can be spotted with HK gear. (Full disclosure: I still have the plush Hello Kitty I got in the 4th grade.)

hellokittybackpackOur trip coincided with the debut of the new EVA Air Hello Kitty route to Houston. The subway and street ads feature Kitty as an astronaut, which makes sense. Why she carries a basketball, I couldn’t say. Maybe the Taiwanese are crazy about the Houston Rockets?

These themed routes have special planes decked out in Hello Kitty from tip to tail. It has to be seen to be believed. The depth and detail is truly astonishing — in addition to the plane wraps, there are more than 100 Hello Kitty branded items inside the plane, from the lavatory soap to the food to the toilet paper. EVA Air has even redesigned its airport counters and kiosks to promote the collaboration. It’s like a a giant Sanrio store.

I can’t even wrap my head around the amount of work and money this must have taken to build out. The licensing and contracts alone, much less the design, printing, and manufacturing costs to duplicate everything on a plane… amazing. They report it’s expensive, but profitable.

That is what you call brand equity.

Posted on

Puppets and pandas

 

taiwan
This summer is off to a unexpected start!

I’ve been advising a good friend and colleague, Michael, on a new business he’s starting. It’s based here in Oakland but with an office in Taipei. He asked if I would go with him on his next trip, which was only a few weeks away, and I jumped at it. I’ve been looking for ways to shake things up in my work and life anyway. Why not see what a couple of weeks in Asia kicks loose? It would also give me an opportunity to piggyback a few days to see family in Tokyo.

The company is confidential, so I can’t say much about that. And I couldn’t possibly cover everything we did and saw in Taiwan. But I can tell you about pandas and gondolas and marble gorges:

Puppets!

puppetsMichael was over the National Museum after several visits, so our first day there we powered through jet lag and heat exhaustion to go to the Puppetry Arts Center instead. It’s a fantastic little museum packed with inventive, delightful, and even creepy puppets of all kinds. And on the way we visited the beautiful Xingtian temple. It was an inspiring start to our adventure.

Gondolas and pandas

gondolaAfter a business meeting downtown later that week we hustled out to the Maokong Gondolas, only to be foiled by a thunderstorm. It was, frankly, a rough day. Let’s just say mistakes were made and neither nature nor transit were on our side. But serendipity graced us, leading to the famed panda born at the Taiwan Zoo. (Which we could see without waiting since it was 100 degrees and raining. Yay?) And we did eventually get to take our gondola ride at sunset later that day. It was worth the wait — gorgeous and serene. Except for those screeching monkeys after dark.

Taipei 101

taipei101Something I love doing in big cities is taking in the cityscape. In Taipei, you do this from the observatory at the Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world. The city is simply huge! It stretches in all directions up to the edges of mountains and rivers. Taipei is a little dreary at ground level, but from above it’s stunning. After the sunset faded we capped our evening with dumplings at Din Tai Fung. Beyond delicious. I’m still drooling over that meal.

Taroko and Sun Moon Lake

tarokoWe left the city for a few days and saw a prettier side of Taiwan. We started by driving down the eastern coast to Hualien, where we found a great night market and the “coffin bread” I’d been hunting for. The next day we drove across Taroko National Park, starting at sea level and making our way up to the peak at 10,000 feet – where the cool air was a welcome break from the oppressive heat – and wound our way back down and over to Sun Moon Lake in the center of the island. Taroko Gorge is made of marble! Beautiful scenery. Crazy, white-knuckle driving conditions. Michael is a brave man.

Cute overload

My inner 9-year-old was giddy over the omnipresent Hello Kitty. (And my inner brand manager was agog at the volume of licensing deals.) She is everywhere, all the time. As were a million other mascots and characters; clearly the culture of cute rules here. Even the Taipei 101 has a mascot, the “damper baby”, a character based on its spherical wind damper. And Din Tai Fung has a dumpling mascot. Seriously. More on this to come.

Posted on

Lessons from Mad Men: Bigger is not always better

mad-men-time-and-life-partnersAs Mad Men winds down, we find our beloved anti-hero, Don Draper, losing his agency.

Over ten years in television time we’ve watched him pull rabbit after rabbit out of his fedora to stay ahead of mergers and takeovers. (Not to mention contracts.) Despite a last-ditch effort, this time there are no more rabbits. It appears Sterling Cooper & Partners will be assimilated by mega-agency McCann Erickson.

Why the SC&P partners would be dismayed at joining the fold does not compute to the McCann rep. He says to them: “You’re dying…and going to advertising heaven.” Where heaven is the biggest clients at the biggest agency. And it’s true, this is heaven for many folks.

But from Sterling Cooper’s point of view this means giving up their clients. The ones that stood with them while they built the agency. The ones they’ve built strong relationships with.

That hits home for me.

Their story is a little different than mine. In addition to clients, SC&P also faces a loss of autonomy, probably most of their staff, and the Sterling Cooper name. More than their name — their identity. If anything, I’ve been reaching beyond my old identity and giving away some of my independence! Where our stories intersect is valuing relationships over billings and not believing bigger is necessarily better.

There was a time in my career when I dreaded cocktail party questions about my work: “Who do you work with?” “Have you done anything I’ve seen?” Few people had heard of my clients, and this felt like the mark of being less-than. Just as the McCann guy assumes, I did expect to move on to bigger clients and bigger agencies. Even though I liked the values-driven, emerging businesses that gave me my start, it seemed inevitable to leave them.

I hadn’t yet grown into the wisdom that these clients were not stepping stones, they were my destination. Big or small, the size of the organization is irrelevant. What matters is finding people you trust and look forward to working with, towards a goal you can get behind. It’s especially sweet when they are small, though. The feeling you get from helping a founder bring her vision and legacy to life is incomparable.

Now I see those questions differently. Sure, we could talk about a company you’ve known for decades, or I could introduce you to one that’s breaking new ground or making the world a better place. Which conversation would you rather have?

Posted on

Are you ready for the design-led revolution?

Over the past year I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with the sustainability team at Autodesk to envision their support for the design-led revolution. Haven’t heard of it? You may not know the DLR moniker, but you’ve seen revolutionary design in action. From affordable prosthetics to solar robotics, high-impact solutions are emerging everywhere. And just in the nick of time!

The reinvention needed to make our planet livable for 9 billion is immense, and I love that Autodesk is committed to helping designers, architects, builders, engineers, and entrepreneurs reshape our world. We need more companies like this leading the way.

Their aim isn’t only to raise awareness about epic challenges and inspire people to do what’s right, although that’s certainly a big part of it. It’s also about helping designers and companies get ahead of  the inevitable resource shortages, urbanization, and climate change coming our way. To stay relevant — and profitable — in the future, you must start thinking differently now.

So, how will you design a better future?

Credit where credit’s due: The awesome folks at Free Range are the storytellers behind the design-led revolution video, manifesto, and hero case studies.

Posted on

Leaving a mark

CEH letterNot many things are as rewarding as seeing your work endure!

This week I received a charming note from a former pro bono client, the Center for Environmental Health, in thanks for my annual donation:
“Dear Erica, Thanks for supporting our work so generously. Of course, how could you say “no” to an organization with a logo as beautiful as this one!!”

Nearly a decade ago, back in my design days, I created that logo. Every time I get a mailing from CEH, it makes me smile to see that energetic orange burst. They do such valuable, powerful work to protect our health — it’s wonderful to know I have contributed lasting value to their mission.

This project was particularly meaningful for me. It was the first time I truly stepped into being a strategist, instead of merely strategic. It was a process that challenged me to my core, with each surprise turn pushing me towards something better and sharper. It was also one of the last visual identities I designed, and certainly one of the best. A lot of the credit goes to the client team for that — when I felt stuck, their collaboration and passion helped me see what was possible.

Thanks, Michael! Loved hearing from you.

Posted on

Purpose drivers

It seems everyone is talking about purpose these days. Imperative has a new take on what purpose means in your career — it’s not the cause you work for, but how you work.

Curious to see what surprises it might reveal, I took Imperative’s purpose driver quiz. My results:

My purpose drivers from Imperative

 

This is spot on! In fact, if you reverse the order it’s an overview of my job as a brand strategist: I generate new insights that create opportunities for organizations.

Taking the test revealed an important facet of what makes work meaningful to me — a time horizon of a year or less. While I certainly look years ahead when developing strategies, it’s important for me to see visible progress in the near-term and to know my work won’t vanish into the corporate void. This accounts for my preference for scrappy, responsive organizations over bureaucratic ones.

Closely related is my preference for organizations, as opposed to individuals or societies. The one-on-one aspects of my work are deeply satisfying — little compares to the a-ha moment when a leader suddenly sees his situation in a whole new way — but the real value is turning individual transformation into a bigger organizational shift. And while I love the idea of shifting society, that feels a little too big. Not to mention systemic changes take years, decades even, to pay off. If they ever do.

Why does knowing your drivers matter? Here’s an example: Let’s say I’m passionate about conscious capitalism. These results tell me I’ll be happier working with a B Corporation, where I can directly impact and enable their success, rather than getting involved in community organizing or policy for this cause. Since I often wonder if supporting cause-driven organizations is enough and think I should be contributing on a higher level, it’s important to understand that what seems more meaningful may not be. I’m right where I should be.

I met Imperative’s CEO Aaron Hurst a decade ago when I became an early volunteer with the Taproot Foundation, which he also founded. He did a great job building Taproot into what it is today, and I look forward to seeing what he does at Imperative.

Building a meaningful career has been incredibly important to me, and hope Imperative can help more people find their purpose.

Updated to add: Want to dive deeper? Check out the Purpose Economy site and book!

Posted on

Acceptance and Gratitude

Recently I had the good fortune to find a forgotten family gem, personal histories from WWII written by two of my grandfather’s brothers. It was an opportunity to learn about uncles I barely knew and get personal insights into one of the most important events of the 20th century.

What struck me was how often the word “lucky” came up in their accounts. Certainly they both mentioned hardships, both personal and physical, but their gratitude for what they did have — especially in contrast to those who had it so much worse — was deeply moving. Each brother spent about 3-1/2 years in the service, a long time to be in a war and away from home, and yet they told their stories with acceptance and grace. Even their comments about the futility of arguing with the Army had a certain air of positive resolve, rather than bitterness or even resignation. My grandfather, his three brothers, and their uncle (shown above) all served many years, and all came home. Those must have been long years not only for them, but for their wives and family as well.

Stoicism is a hallmark of my father’s family, although I did not inherit as much of it as I would like. I never forget I have been very lucky in life, but reading their stories inspires me to focus more on remembering the good more than the bad.

Posted on

Explainers

Exploratorium ExplainersThis weekend a friend was in town, and visitors are great prompts to do all the local things we don’t get around to — in this case, the new Exploratorium!

Something that caught my eye is their name for exhibit guides: Explainers. It’s a miniscule detail compared to the immensity and wonder of all the hands-on exhibits, but this struck me as truly the perfect word. In contrast to titles like Docent, Explainer is simple, kid-friendly, and communicates exactly what they do. Bonus points: Exploratorium Explainers is alliterative!

While small, this is a touchpoint that reinforces a playful, thoughtful brand experience.