I found this video of Aerosmith’s recent visit to Lima, Peru. It shows Steven Tyler, the legendary vocalist of the band, upon his arrival to the hotel as he pauses to snap pictures of the hundred or so fans that had congregated outside the hotel to welcome them.

This small gesture may seem trivial but it really is not. Do you really think that Tyler, a veteran rock star who has performed for millions of people around the globe was so impressed by the handful of screaming fans that he felt compelled to produce his camera and start taking pictures?

Of course not. So, why did he do it? To make his fans feel special…

By holding that camera in his hand and pointing the lens to the fans what he is really saying is: you are the rock stars, I respect you and I thank you for your support. This kind of gesture explains why Steven and his bandmates are still hot after more than 40 years in the music business, while many others have disappeared after 15 minutes of fame.

Steven Tyler, at 62 and a multi-millionaire, could most certainly slow down or even retire, but he and his band are still out there, playing their hearts out in every concert and giving their fans more than they ask for, every time.

Passion for what you do and respect for your customers: are you delivering that? Are you treating your customers like rock stars?

The elevator at the hotel I was staying last week had a sign that read: “Please allow 30 minutes for check-out in order not to disrupt your schedule”. The hotel had a problem: it couldn’t check people out fast enough. But they also had a choice. They could:

a. Make it a customer’s problem
b. Turn the problem into an opportunity

They chose (a) and hanged the little sign in the elevator.

Compare that approach to what this South Florida hospital is doing about another situation where customers don’t like to wait: emergency room visits. National average emergency room wait time is about an hour, but Aventura Hospital has managed to bring it down to just a few minutes.

This compelling competitive advantage is effectively communicated through billboards that show actual, current waiting times. The information is texted directly to the billboards (and to the hospital’s website) and refreshed every 30 minutes.

This simple and relevant benefit is building the hospital’s brand. It has also increased business: since the billboards went up, emergency room visits have jumped 25%.

Problems tell you where you can add value and differentiate yourself. Next time you find a problem, find also a way to turn it into an opportunity.

Brand DNA: Uncover Your Organization’s Genetic Code For Competitive Advantage is to small business branding what E-Myth is to small business systems. In E-Myth, author Michael Gerber uses the fictional story of Sarah, a passionate but struggling entrepreneur, to remind us of the curse of the technician: the mistake many small business owners make by assuming that a particular skill or passion can be easily turned it into a business (we now know that passion and skill are not enough, and that we need to have systems in place; in other words, we must learn to work ON our business, not IN our business).

In Brand DNA, authors Carol Chapman and Suzanne Tulien tell us the story of Meg, an ambitious but also struggling entrepreneur, who has fallen victim to another common small business myth: that doing more “marketing” and constantly tweaking our logo, packaging, etc. will automatically get us more business.

The authors make a convincing case that before spending any money on marketing we must first define what our brand is all about, what makes it different, and what are the behaviors that are more likely to communicate and reinforce that message.

They also ask small business owners to take a cue from world class brands like Starbucks and Apple, who spend most of their marketing efforts and money in building an outstanding customer experience instead of advertising.

Other books have also covered this topic at length, but what I find valuable and different in this one is that by using the story of Meg and her brand, Ecologé, it adds clarity to concepts that otherwise would be too dry and difficult to grasp in the absence of a specific example.

The book also goes one step further by providing an interactive section with practical exercises so that you can apply the book’s main ideas to your own small business.

If you are a newly minted entrepreneur just starting a small business you will find this book extremely valuable and relevant. If you are a seasoned small business owner with several years of success under your belt, it wouldn’t hurt to give Brand DNA a quick read if only to make sure that you’re covering all the bases in your branding efforts (let’s not forget that losing sight of the basics is one of the most common reasons why entrepreneurs sometimes get in trouble).

A few years ago, my wife and I visited the Croatian island of Korcula. We arrived on a Sunday night. The plan was to do some sightseeing on Monday, and return to Dubrovnik on Tuesday so we could take the flight back to Miami Wednesday morning. Early on Monday, we walked to the bus station to get our ticket, only to have the attendant tell us: “sorry, it is not possible”. The bus schedule had changed, and instead of the usual daily buses to Dubrovnik, there was only one bus per week, on Sundays.

Our first reaction was to laugh, not at the situation, mind you, but at the expression: “Sorry, it is not possible”. We’d already heard it many times during our trip, after asking questions like: may we have a late check-out? or, may I substitute fries for the salad? As Americans, we don’t like to be told that something is not possible (“Just Do It”, remember?) so we immediately started looking for options:

• Boat or ferry? Sorry, not possible. Winter schedule: next ferry leaves on Wednesday.
• Plane? Sorry, not possible. No planes.
• Rental car? Sorry, not possible. All booked.

Then we thought, what about a taxi? Now, you don’t usually take a taxi for a 200 km trip, but when you’re running out of options and you must absolutely, positively find a solution or else… you can get very creative very quickly. We decided to talk to the hostel operator about this option, and fortunately for us, her best friend happened to be a taxi driver. She offered to take us for $200, more or less what she made in a full day’s work.

Granted, $200 was more than the bus would have cost us, but the bus option didn’t exist any more. On the other hand, a hundred bucks per person may sound expensive, but only if you see it as a taxi ride. If you look at it as a half day excursion in a comfortable car, driven by a helpful local who can show you all the small towns along the way, and take you to the best spots to eat and take pictures, it starts sounding like a bargain. By changing our frame of reference from “taxi ride” to “excursion” we were able to find a creative solution to our problem.

Changing our frame of reference is a great way to come up with creative solutions and innovative brand ideas:

• A 4-door coupe? Impossible? Not really. It just took a few good questions and a different way of looking at things for auto makers to notice that what people want in a coupe is not necessarily two doors, but streamlined styling.
  
• A successful mobile restaurant that spends $0 on advertising and relies just on Twitter word of mouth to bring people in? Impossible? Not at all… Just ask the folks at Kogi BBQ and Latin Burger.  By changing their frame of reference from “fast food operator” to “exclusive club (Twitter followers)” they were able to build a thriving business model.
  
• $20 for flip flops? Impossible? Try possible. The brand managers at Havaianas can probably tell you how changing their frame of reference from “basic footwear” to “fashion accessory” made charging such a premium price possible.
  

Sometimes all it takes to solve a problem or come up with a good idea is to step out of our little mental ghettos and look at things from a different perspective.

I was so impressed with the presentation Marty Neumeier put together for The Brand Gap, that I decided to order his second book, Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands, which deals with the subject of differentiation (when everyone else zigs, zag!). This book is a great manual and reference guide on how to discover, design and maintain your brand.

The book explains how to build a brand in 17 steps. Each step is a fundamental question (i.e. Who are you?, What is your vision?, etc.) you need to answer before moving to the next one.

The author gives you a detailed list of assignments to help you answer each of the 17 questions effectively. He also applies the process to a fictional wine bar concept, which makes his dissertation easier to follow.

ZAG is written in a format that Neumeier calls a “whiteboard overview”, meaning that the book uses plenty of graphics, resembling a well crafted PowerPoint presentation, with the text substituting for the life speaker.

Neumeier is a branding genius, and he writes his books the same way he designs brands: with absolute clarity, focus, and nothing superfluous that may detract from the central message he wants to convey.

I read ZAG in just a couple of days. Once I started I couldn’t put it down. The book has so many valuable quotes and insights that it is a virtual highlighter magnet.  Apparently, the author was well aware of this and conveniently listed the most valuable passages of the book in the last few pages. Some examples:

Complete this sentence: our brand is the ONLY ______ that ______.   If you can’t say you are the “only” go back and start over.

Your value proposition is the reason your brand matters to customers.  One proposition per brand.

Best practices are usually common practices.  And common practices will never add up to a zag.

ZAG was definitely worth reading, and I’ll be keeping it close by for future reference.

In my recent trip to Brazil I took a picture of this shirt, which I think vividly exemplifies a very important attribute of great brands: their ability to generate clear and consistent mental associations as soon as somebody hears their name.

The words on this shirt are exactly what comes to mind when we hear “Brazil”.  This immediate connection is one of the reasons why Brazil is a strong brand.  Other countries, like Paraguay or Honduras, for example, are weak brands because most people are not able to easily associate any meaning to them.

My country, Peru, is beginning to position itself as a brand.  Whenever I tell people that I am from Peru, the most common reaction is: “Oh, Peruvian fooooood”, it’s the best!!!.”  Peru is slowly but surely becoming known for its fascinating cuisine.  Another strong association is Machu Picchu, and the iconic image that has been seen by millions of people all over the world.

There are other associations that can be exploited, but they need a little marketing help.  For example: “surfing”.  Peru’s beaches are great for surfing, but that hasn’t yet been communicated as effectively as the country’s reputation for great food.  Another association that can probably work for Peru is “rain forest”.

For brand associations to be effective, they must work together to reinforce one single central theme.  In the case of Brazil, notice how words like “beach”, “soccer”, “samba” and “caipirinha” work nicely together to reinforce the central theme of “pleasurable relaxation”, or “relaxed pleasure” that usually comes to mind when one hears the word “Brazil”.

Companies, products and people are also brands, and they must work on developing strong mental associations in order to differentiate themselves and break through the clutter, which is the biggest obstacle to making it in today’s marketplace.

What do you want people to think when they hear your name or the name of your product?  Identify a few (five or six) positive and memorable words that go well with you and what you want to project, and work hard to live up to them.  You will then be on your way to building a strong brand.

Posted via email from Mario Sanchez Carrion | Posterous

The following example is a testament to the power of brands.

Head over to your closest Whole Foods and you’ll probably see this Sigg reusable water bottle display:

Each bottle sells for $19.99 or more.

If you head to Walgreens, you will find very similar bottles selling for $3.99.  The difference?: the brand is not Sigg.

Keep browsing through the Walgreens aisles and you’ll find these coffee mugs (essentially the same product plus a little bit of insulation) selling for a whopping $17.95:

Why would somebody pay between 350% and 400% more for essentially the same products?

Because of the power of brands…

You spend $19.99 on a Sigg not because you need a water bottle, but because you want to tell the world that you are hip, environmentally conscious and stylish. Similarly, you don’t spend $17.95 on an NC State coffee mug because you want to keep your coffee warm, but because you want to display your college colors with pride.

People are willing to pay to belong to a tribe,and brands just make it easier.

Entrepreneurial creativity never ceases to amaze me.

I was going through some Twitter feeds today, and found a link to this excellent report on NPR about a company called Bamboo Bike Studio, based in Brooklyn, NY. Three entrepreneurs, Justin Aguinaldo, Sean Murray and Marty Odlin are the force behind this remarkable outfit that is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of niche marketing you can possibly find.

Bamboo Bike Studio has reinvented a product that has been around hundreds of years and has done it in so many different ways:

1. They use a different material (bamboo) to build their bike frames, instead of the usual steel.
2. They have chosen a material that ties in perfectly with the current trend toward sustainability and environmental protection (bamboo is a renewable resource).
3. They are taking their social responsibility one large step further by planning to build bamboo bike factories in different African and Latin American countries.
4. They don’t just sell a product: they sell an experience. Here’s where it gets interesting: you don’t buy a bike, you buy a “bike class”, a weekend-long workshop where the prospective bike owner builds his/her own bike.

By finding this creative niche, BBS has created a true Purple Cow, a product that is at the same time its own marketing: the bikes look so unique that they instantly become a conversation piece.  And, if that weren’t enough, just picture the bike owners telling their friends the story of how they made those amazing bikes themselves!

As they say (and this example proves it) there are no mature markets or products, only mature minds…

Head on to BambooBikeStudio.com to learn more about this great company, of follow them on Twitter.