Last week, we had the privilege of attending a speaking engagement featuring Don Schmincke. As founder of the Saga Leadership Institute, Don has authored a number of books on leadership and has spent over two decades analyzing high performing teams. His morning session shared a variety of insights on the world’s highest performing organizations. Ultimately, through 30 years of research and observation, his team has found that the best organizations outperform by activating passion within their people. That passion is packaged through a clear, compelling internal belief system, which drives employee behavior and culminates in desired results. In his words, the most successful organizations create a “compelling saga.” The compelling saga inspires people to believe, encourages self sacrifice for the greater good of the organization, and fosters passion within the workforce. That passion drives the company to outmaneuver and demoralize its competitors.

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Not too long ago, consumers thought Old Spice was simply your father’s Aftershave. It came in a rather oddly iconic white glass bottle and anyone over 30 remembers seeing in their Father’s/Grandfather’s bathroom. It was cheap. It was potent. And supposedly, it was what “real men” smelled like. Strong, burly and handsome men. The kinds with hairy chests, that worked on ships and always got the girl. After all it was marketed, in all seriousness, as “The Mark of a Man.” But times change, the 80’s came and attitudes like that can only last for so long. The idea behind it became, for lack of a better word, cheesy, old and musky. And that will turn your hunky brand into a 90 lb weakling. So what does an irrelevant, stagnating brand do?

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Since the Tiger Woods scandal broke last Fall, we’ve been regularly asked our opinion on the effects both to his personal brand and to those of the brands who’ve endorsed him. I’ve fielded the question in brand workshops, speaking engagements and client meetings. In the five months since the story unfolded, we’ve generally seen it as one of the larger destructions of brand equity in recent memory. In fact, Associate Professors Dr. Victor Stango and Dr. Christopher Knittel at the University of California Davis estimated that from the time of his accident to the announcement of his “indefinite leave” from golf that his endorsing brands lost $5-12 billion of shareholder value.

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Last week, I presented a workshop on branding in Tampa to 30 member companies within the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations. The event, part of the association’s CEO Forum, included top executives from industry-leading companies across the country. The presentation included an overview on brands, examples of world-leading service brands, the financial benefits of a well-conceived and executed brand strategy, and recommendations on how to position an industry-leading HR services brand.

Check out the entire presentation:
2010 and Beyond. Branding for Growth in The New Normal.

This Spring, Chipotle locations around the country unveiled a new identity for the popular burrito chain. The brand has transitioned from it’s original retro-shaped black and white logo, to a ‘medallion’ logo mark which has now evolved into their current identity designed by San Francisco-based Sequence.

The new identity provides a more stylized pepper, brighter colors and a fun set of “food with integrity” medallions that provide a fun visual for Chipotle’s emphasis on fresh ingredients. Overall the new identity is a nice extension of the previous mark, but this leads us to ask ourselves, since the Chipotle brand is so strong- do we even care what the logo looks like?

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