Chasing Rainbows Midst The Storm!

This past weekend a tornado ripped right through downtown Atlanta. There are some that I know that say it was destined to hit and targeted.

It hit the CNN headquarters along with the coliseum where the SEC Basketball Playoffs were in progress.

Then it traveled east and touched ground literally across the railroad tracks from our office in an intown neighborhood called Cabbage Town.

It’s too bad that tornados don’t have a name. CNN did round the clock coverage of the damage.

The SEC play-off was moved to an ACC coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus and the University of Georgia game got postponed until the next day. Of course UGA went on to win twice on Saturday and clinch the SEC title.

They won more games against SEC teams over the weekend than they won all season long.

Perseverance and Moving Forward is a personal theme of mine.

The Yankelovich folks that conduct and publish the annual Monitor Report showcased American consumers as being in the “GO-MODE” in their annual report of the consumer mindset.

Here is a quote of what they observe:

“Despite widely divergent developments, and perhaps even because of them, there’s a different kind of energy in the air. An enterprising spirit and mindset. A sense of movement, growth and even accomplishment. No matter how far and wide consumers continue to be pulled, and regardless of age, they are determined to keep moving along. They’re in the GO-MODE and determined to get to ‘next’.”

Yankelovich goes on to report that the desire to “do something new and exciting” posts at 56% in 2007, up from 41% in 2002.

On Monday of this week, the stock market shuddered with the sale of a New York financial group for $2 a share. Yesterday the Dow jumped up more than 400 points.

The drive of the GO-MODE is a lot like riding a roller coaster that never really stops!

Snapshot picture today…

BrandVenture has a client that is building second homes up in the wilderness of the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. We are identifying the best potential customers and developing highly targeted strategies to reach them and move the real estate.

We are planning to do some Coffee House Chats of high potential consumer groups.

When I spoke to the owner of a focus group facility in Charlotte today concerning a quote that did not click with past budgets, she went off on a tangent defending her premium recruitment costs.

First, she told me that the costs were high because they groups were being conducting at a Starbucks Coffee and not in her “beautiful” focus group rooms.

Ok…

But then second, she said that “with the economy in this horrible recession” that “finding anyone who would think of buying a second home would be impossible.”

Maybe I’m too much of an optimist, but when the market rallies back and consumers reinvent, I really don’t think that the market place is all that bleak.

Here’s another quote from Yankelovich…

“Everyday, consumers are bombarded with an entirely new menu of goods to buy, drink, plug in and rev up! They know how to reinvent the wheel – and reinvent it again.”

After the tornado hit Atlanta on Friday, we ended up with another set of tornados on Saturday. I had spent a looooooonnnnnggggg week with clients doing strategy planning sessions and I was more than ready to get up to my log cabin in the North Georgia mountains and just relax.

But…as I headed up on Saturday afternoon and thought that the sky was clear, another tornado formed just southeast of where I was driving. The sky was pitch black and I spotted a funnel cloud that appeared to be heading away from me.

Did I turn around and run for cover?

No. I just continued moving forward on a couple alternative roadways.

About 30 minutes later as I came up over the mountains, there was a rainbow shining on the horizon.

While the press and the marketing consultants may have their opinion sets about the state of the economy and the outlook of the future, are you and your brand in the GO MODE?