Now How Cool Is That!

I saw more of them yesterday.

Some preach…some give you an inside look at the inner circle…some exalt.

I am sure you have seen them.

Whether you watch CNN, FOX, CBS, MSNBC…they are out there.

They include the banks, the auto manufacturers, the telecoms, the insurance companies, the oil giants, the global traders…

It’s their corporate brand ads extolling the attributes of their products and their mission statements.

Okay.

It is because of this new rash of corporate ads that makes the current issue of Fast Company Magazine’s featured article stand out even more so.

The title of the article is “The Invincible Apple…10 Lessons From The Coolest Company Anywhere.”

With Steve Jobs at the helm, the black turtleneck and blue jeans sans the belts dominates the executive set.

A couple of the lesson subtitles captures what makes Apple “the coolest anywhere” company:
** Turn Feedback Into Inspiration
** Don’t Invent, Reinvent
** Serve Your Customer. No, Really.
** Transcend Orthodoxy

But the coolest of the 10 Lessons is titled “Everything Is Marketing.”

Get a load of this…

“When Martin Lindstrom, a brand consult and author of Buyology: The Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, examined those brains under a functional magnetic-resonance-imaging scanner, he discovered that Apple devotees are indistinguishable from those committed to Jesus.”

And as I preach…brand success is contingent upon every touch-point of the brand experience.

“Think of the iPod’s white earbuds, the Mac’s startup sound, or the unmistakable shape of of the MacBook’s back panel. None of these choices were accidental.”

The article goes on…

“The actual launch day (of the iPad) is choreographed like a dictator’s display of military splendor… This past January 27, when I walked into Apple’s iPad debut, the street ads depicted something old; when I left, there’s the iPad everywhere you look.”

“Study the iPad in the post its clock says 9:41 a.m. Why? Apple thought of that too. That’s the exact moment that Jobs revealed the iPad to the world.”

Let me say it again…brand success is contingent upon every touch-point of the brand experience.

And it's not complicated. The drive is simple…but a conviction.

Get a load of this process of product engineering for a DVD-burning program…

After three weeks of preparation time, the engineering team gathered in the board room with “page after page of prototype screen shots showing the new program’s various windows and menu options along with paragraphs of documentation describing how the app would work.”

“Then Steve (Steve Jobs) comes in. He doesn’t look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard and draws a rectangle and says…

“Here’s the new application. Its got one window. You drag your video into the window. They you click the button that say ‘BURN.’ That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.”

I will repeat it again. The drive is simple…but a conviction.

Apple isn’t the only cool company out there.

There are others and they are not all BIG companies like Apple.

This past week in my Entrepreneurship class I reiterated, “build it and they will come is dead.”

Back to those corporate ads…

I get accused as seeing the glass half full more than I should.

Okay.

But as I blogged last week… I know the storms are coming.

And you know how I know?

Because I have an App on my iPhone that shows one is approaching.

Seriously.

Now is that cool or what!