29Jul 2022 by Aaron Templer No Comments
Rebranding is Change Leadership

Rebranding is Change Leadership

Branding, Leadership, Three Over Four Approach
How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb? Two: One to do it, and another to tell everyone how they would have done it better. Marketers are like guitarists in this way. We just love to amp up our outrage anytime there's a high visibility rebrand (even if they work out just fine most of the time). It's a passtime of ours, really. In my first column for Inc.com (here's all three I've written for them) I use this as a vector for discussing one dimension of leadership's relationship with marketing: Branding and rebranding is mostly about leadership because leading an organization's identity change is actually a complex and sophisticated exercise in leadership, challenging for the most seasoned leaders let alone marketers without any leadership training. So without…
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01Jun 2014 by Aaron Templer
Storytelling the Three Over Four Way

Storytelling the Three Over Four Way

Branding, Marketing, Three Over Four Approach
I had a terrific time working with The Colorado Medical Society this past May. The President of the CMS had a great idea to interweave storytelling techniques for leaders throughout the entire conference. His thinking was that we all leave these conferences full of energy, armed with new information to make changes in our society, businesses, or communities. But we’re missing the tools to actually do something about it. So I was brought in to help by way of providing techniques for leaders to tell stories. Storytelling being, of course, one of the more effective way to engage and move people. We did a few things to bring storytelling into the conference. (This is an environment which, incidentally, isn’t exactly the most welcoming place for such a topic. After all,…
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18Apr 2013 by Aaron Templer
Getting over ourselves

Getting over ourselves

Branding, Reputation Management, Social Capital, Three Over Four Approach
Thinking beyond yourself when you're a teenager is as difficult as understanding #talklikeyourbestfriend as an adult. Relationships were limited because we weren't chemically capable of thinking beyond ourselves. There comes a time, of course, when it becomes clear that relationships are more meaningful over the long haul when we put someone else's needs on par or ahead of our own. There are more returns and deeper significance. But it requires us to think beyond ourselves and care for the other person in the relationship in ways that we were (or at least I was) incapable of as a teenager. (And yes, for me now. This is something I don't have to tell most of you—mainly just myself. But it's a working simile, and I'm going with it.) Social capital, by…
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12Jan 2013 by Aaron Templer

Extraordinary expectations. Or none at all. Whatever.

Branding, Leadership, Three Over Four Approach
[caption id="attachment_2629" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="So do not care."][/caption] I play percussion for a South Asian dance troupe. Many of the dancers are young women with such high energy and expressions of optimism and glee that it's as if their life is accompanied by abundant exclamation points and OMG's hanging over their heads wherever they go. Sometimes I'll walk into a practice studio or a room filled with these dancers and their energy hits me like I've splashed down at the end of a water ride into a sparkly-pink, fruity perfume pool. It's taken some getting used to. I thought of this when I read Kevin Kelly's interesting piece about Extraordinary (clipped in this Farnam Street Blog post, where I found it). The gist: Because we are exposed so regularly and…
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02Jan 2012 by Aaron Templer

No more. No less.

Branding, Marketing, Three Over Four Approach
Last year, I busted out a few guest posts for the blog Please Feed The Animals. When I asked Erik Proulx (the curator of the place turned film director and inspiration for me and countless others to have the courage to just friggin’ do stuff that’s important) how many words he thought worked best on PFTA, he said “between 30 and 3000.” There’s this famous scene from Amadeus. I don’t understand. There are just as many notes as I required. Neither more no less. And then this nice article from the ever-reposeful Pico Iyer quotes Thoreau: “the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.” All reminders for me today: It’s the story, not the tactics associated with telling it, that makes…
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27Sep 2011 by Aaron Templer

Shame on the brand? Or shame on the agency?

Branding, Marketing, Three Over Four Approach
Are values solely the domain of the client? The brand? Watch this video. Maybe not new to many of you, but important. I can’t ever remember hearing about the agencies responsible for this kind of work coming under criticism. Can somebody point me to an instance? Because I’m wondering why. Is it wrong to keep the agencies responsible for this stuff out scrutiny? Why are they immune from criticism? Can’t they say no to the work? Arthur Anderson wasn’t exactly excused in the Eron’s misdeeds. Values matter. We make decisions based on them. Those decisions create good, spread ideas, move us forward. Or they contribute to the dynamics in our world we know aren’t of value. I bet that there’re more than a few agencies who’ve turned down work like…
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13Jul 2011 by Aaron Templer

3-3-1 Brand Strategy

Branding, Three Over Four Approach
Let’s get to the simple side of complexity. Try this on for size, fellow branding geeks. Branding happens in three stages: What you think you’re gonna get What you actually get What you’re gonna do about it Building a brand is about asking and answering three questions: What do I/we do well? How I/do we do it differently? Why does it matter? And managing a brand is about one thing: Inspiring a shared vision. Will that work? cute little milk / CC BY 2.0
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22Mar 2011 by Aaron Templer No Comments

Remarkable, thy hair is red

Branding, Presenting, Social web
A remarkable person has just landed a guest columnist gig with Entrepreneur Magazine. Erika Napolefuckintano. The Readhead. I say Entrepreneur is lucky to have her. For anyone who’s attended one of my presentations - Branding for the Rest of Us or Leading in a Social World - you’ve probably heard me talk about Erika. I often use her as an example of remarkability - a section where I mash-up Jim Collins and Seth Godin to talk about declaring and being that thing that sets you apart. (more…)
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