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Be playful
It makes you happy and drives competitors crazy

Presidential candidate Herman Cain says we’re wound too tight. We need to relax. It’s as central to Cain’s message as his 9-9-9 tax program. He is blissfully unconventional and unruffled by criticisms from homogenized traditionalists. He gives them fits.

Maybe that’s why his campaign tossed up this gem. As it sailed over their heads, all the tightly wound saw was a man smoking on TV (the horrors) and Cain’s so-called “creepy smile.” Watch it a couple of times. Do you get it? Keep watching till you do.

Cain is playing. His intentions are serious, but he’s not going all grave and gravitas about it. As if to underscore the point, Cain practically gives us a get-the-joke wink at the end. He’s all about being who he is while sticking his thumb in the eye of conventional wisdom and laughing all the way to the media bank.

No way did the ad cost over $500 to produce. But, consider the ROI: free plays on Letterman (CBS), Kimmel (ABC), plus countless runs on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and others. Cain’s campaign struck the mother lode of earned media by being themselves and having fun.

Playing is fun. It makes you happy. It drives competitors crazy. Case in point: Governor Perry unveiled a flat tax last week. What’s everyone talking about? Smoking. Creepy smile. Cain.

That’s a win for Cain and The Ten Be’s of Better Branding.

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Forever among the crazy ones

Why does Steve Jobs’ death matter to so many people who never met him? For the same reason some ads explode on impact while others whisper off unnoticed. Steve Jobs was relevant. Not in some abstract way, but in ways intimately personal to each of us.

He revolutionized our relationship with music. He gave us phones that were truly smart. He changed how we interact with computers (no matter what those Microsoft weasels say) with the Mac. (Sorry.) Then, in his final masterstroke, Jobs ushered in the post-pc era.

My heart sank when the news reached me. I thought of his family, his company, his ideas not yet realized. Then a smile grew as I watched movie of Steve’s making in my mind’s eye: the moment Michael Plotczyk first set my hand down on a Macintosh mouse in 1984, the Christmas morning Santa delivered my first iPod, the day John and I brought home our first blue iMac, the Mac I used to edit my first video in 1998, and on and on it played.

Then, these words came to mind: “here’s to the crazy ones….” Remember the ad?

I found a version of it which was never aired. It’s voiced by Jobs himself. Watching it, I realized how to make it, with due respect to Steve, insanely great. It’s how I’ll remember his impact on the world. Though we never met, he was the crazy one who mattered to my life.

(Special thanks to Andrew for his fast work in our smokin’ hot Mac editing suite building this.)
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The three invisible contributions of Steve Jobs

Seldom does an era come to an end so clearly as with Steve Jobs’s resignation as Apple’s CEO. His life’s work changed more than the fortunes of one California fruit company. He also showed us all how to infuse a brand with magnetic power through his three invisible contributions.

As a business decision-maker, how could you not be a fan of Steve Jobs? He launched the personal computer revolution, gave us the graphic interface and mouse now taken for granted. His iPod changed how we listen to music and the industry that creates it. The iPhone redefined the very idea of a smart phone. And then, he changed how we interact with information to begin the post-pc era with the iPad.

Along the way, one thing remained unaltered, undiluted, and undeterred.

Invisible contribution #1: Set a bold standard and stick to it

Apple today bobs atop of the ocean of company valuations, the biggest fish in the sea—worldwide. Product sales is just one metric, the magic is the result of Steve Jobs’ singleness of vision; he saw the invisible and pursued it without compromise.

Insanely great

Look past the Mac, or iPod, or even the iPhone and iPad. Job’s more significant contribution came in the hundreds and thousands of products we never saw. For every successful Apple product, there were hundreds to which Jobs said NO because they were merely great without hope of rising to his standard of insanely great.

Invisible contribution #2: See it bigger than anyone else

Apple has a penchant for going left when the world turns right. Some ideas were derided as mistakes along the way: Lisa, Newton, the MacCube, etc. But, how could they be mistakes when each left a DNA trail ultimately connecting to the products selling by the millions today.

Every step, even while seemingly making no sense at the time, later revealed a straight-line advance in pursuit of something that would ultimately make perfect sense—and money.

String theory of Steve

It’s a kind of string-theory leadership. Start by accepting there are patterns in the universe too big for our minds to see; parallel realities, possibilities. Except, Steve saw them for Apple. And, he led the company to them repeatedly.

Invisible contribution #3: Create a culture of belief

Apple’s successful boldy-going-where-no-computer-has-gone-before approach bred within the company a culture of belief that will live on long after Steve is gone. The media made it about Steve. Internally, he made it bigger. He made it about belief.

Knowing is good. You can get by with knowing. But, believing is knowing on steroids. Belief gives Apple its magnetic world-changing swagger.

What are you waiting for?

Success in business, branding, and life is the byproduct of intentional, consistent action over time. But, remember, time is finite; ours comes in limited supply.

Therein lies a fourth more personal contribution on Steve’s part: urgency. His do-it-now nature was only sharpened by the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He came to work every day with a sense of now.

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life,” Jobs said in his Stanford University commencement address. “It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

What will be your invisible contribution today?

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Can it just work for you too?

Apple doesn’t build computers, mp3 players, or even phones. They provide something more meaningful: human connections. Instead of merely selling a device, Steve Jobs and company connects us to what we care about: music, people, memories. How they do is easy to see, if you know where to look.

In his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address,  Jobs gave up the magic on a single slide. It wasn’t quoted in any news story or blog I could find. Yet, it succinctly conveys both what Apple does and how you can drive focused excellence in your company.

Hidden in plain view

After parading their latest innovations past the convention of software developers, Jobs summed up what makes Apple Apple. Echoing three words on the slide displayed two-stories high behind him, he said “It just works.” Well, duh.

Amazing things are often hidden in plain view. In this case, “It just works,” is more than a catch phrase or summation of the presentation. It’s a filter for screening out what might not fit the brand. It’s a lens that focuses innovation. It’s a measuring stick. It’s Apple’s North Star.

It works even when it doesn’t

The elegance of this simple phrase is how it both defines what Apple stands for and what they stand against. When MobileMe, a collection of online tools,  crashed and burned on launch, Jobs threw himself on the sword. He admitted it didn’t measure up to Apple’s standards—without elaborating on them specifically. Now you know: Mobile me didn’t “just work.”

AppleTV didn’t just work either. Only after Apple replaced the original hard-drive version with a hockey-puck-sized device that streams instead of stores tv shows and movies did AppleTV meet their standard. The original was clunky and hard to use. The new one plugs in and, of course, just works. It works so well, cable operators may be seeing a threat in AppleTV.

What works for you?

Technically-oriented people (aka geeks) may prefer devices with steep learning curves. Cleaving onto cantankerous operating systems, they look down their noses at Apple’s ease of use. No worries. There’s a market for devices that don’t just work, too. As they say, that’s why there are both blue cars and red cars.

Apple’s lineup is sheathed in so much cool, it’s easy to overlook their underlying philosophy. Three simple words shape everything they do: it just works. What simple words shape what you do?

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