A brand is the creation of faith in two groups that absolutely cannot be fooled: your employee culture and your customer culture. The reason branding strategies don’t work is they don’t look where these cultures look to decide whether to grant the leap of faith required to become branded. Branding is a tribute, not a verb. Your company can’t just claim or demand to be branded; it has to be given to you.
There is nothing you sell that a customer can’t choose to buy somewhere else or do without—except an intimate, values-based relationship between customer and company. That relationship can’t easily be deconstructed by your competition and competitors can’t use price, size, marketing or sales to bust it apart. To be a successful brand you must be branded not only for what you sell but for how you sell it.
One of the main influences of the slap Company and member of the MC5 Michael Davis died last night of liver failure. He was 68 years old and with his wife in Chico California at Enloe Medical Center at his time of passing.
Born on June 5, 1943, the bassist gained attention in the revolutionary Detroit band MC5 and played in new version of the group called DKT-MC5 with former MC5 members Wayne Kramer on guitar & Dennis Thompson on the drums.
The original MC5 rocketed to prominence from 1964 to 1972, making waves with incendiary political activist lyrics and a blistering early-punk sound, beginning with their first album “Kick Out the Jams,” released in 1969.
A worlds top bassist and also producer, MC5′s bassist was going to be in Belgium this week recording with punk rock musician Sonny Vincent, said Davis’ wife.
Davis had a scare in 2006 when he injured his back in a motorcycle accident on a Southern California freeway. He later co-founded the non-profit Music Is Revolution Foundation, dedicated to supporting music education programs in public schools.
In the last few years, Davis also returned to a love of painting, fostered when he first studied fine arts at Wayne State University in Michigan. He dropped out of the program in 1964 to play music, but started studying art again recently in Oregon and California, with the intention of finishing his bachelor’s degree in fine arts.
Davis is survived by his wife, their three sons, and a daughter from a previous marriage. Memorial plans were pending, said Angela Davis.
This is not soft stuff. This is the stuff of hardcore results. The companies that bring us in to do this work either to build a brandable customer experience or transform and protect their employee and manager cultures. We like to say they don’t have patience as a value, they are high demand organizations. They have gone through the times of making managers millionaires just by virtue of them showing up and fogging up a mirror they still became day traders with their own career. There has to be something else. There is something that is worth more than financial intellectual and physical commitment and that’s emotional commitment. The opposite of emotional is not irrational the opposite of emotional is detached. There isn’t a strategy or performance goal that is weight bearing if its placed on a platform of detached culture.
Understand your employees personal values. Make it clear they are working in a hosted environment and the company has certain priorities and they have to deliver on those. But the other side of the equation is we allow you to be yourself by living your values at work and at home without separation. This is the equation for fulfillment. Humanity is only dangerous and unpredictable when you don’t start from Humanity in the first place.
Wait a minute — what has happened to us? People are afraid all the time — a low, humming anxiety. We’re angry and quick to direct it at others, to be self-righteous, intolerant and unforgiving. We’re obsessed with the lifestyles of the rich and heinous and take delight in turning the sordid affairs of others into celebrity status. We’re hungry for something even though we’re fed constantly. We’re complacent but restless. We’re desperate to feel yet eager to be anesthetized. We categorize our own inconveniences as nightmares and stay uninvolved in fixing real nightmares of those less fortunate. We’re sure we’re going to Heaven if we can prevent others from getting there first to spoil it.
I know a lot of very accomplished people; nobody sleeps without chomping down a couple of Ambien brownies. Anyone who feels anything is feeling a cold breath that whispers we are somehow vulnerable and incomplete.
How, exactly, did we let this happen? This is not our true character; this is not who we ever wanted to become.
It’s not some cosmic coincidence. If we can be kept uncertain and angry (anger being the normal psychological response to fear), feeling like victims — helpless and unaccountable for what happens to us, and hungry to be something we’re not… then anyone can sell us anything. From consumer to citizen, someone is always trying to sell us something and you can bet they’ve figured this out.
It’s not always easy to see — it’s relentless but subtle. It wasn’t one obvious body blow; it was a lot of paper cuts to the soul that went unnoticed, untreated and that infected our true sense of self. It has taken its toll. And the only thing we can do — what we must do — is to take it back.
It starts with knowing yourself. If you don’t know what’s true for you, everyone else has unusual influence. Understand who you are and who your people are. Gather them — your chosen community of relatives, friends and neighbors. Let them know who they are, stand by them and expect the same. Humanity is only undependable when you don’t start from humanity in the first place.
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“The last thing I want to say is ‘I’m a victim,’ but I am. I believe it’s a trickledown from Bush.” -Courtney Love
Just wanted to drop you a line; I met you at the HCI Engagement Conference in Chicago this past July. I got a bit emotional when I spoke to you while signing my book (p. 197 per my request). I appreciated your genuineness during the exchange. You kind of looked right through me and it made me reconsider some things; I thought my damage had to do with a company early on in my career and was giving my then-current employer a pass. You asked me to check in; here I am.
I wanted to let you know that I did some hearty self-reflection after that trip and made some pretty big decisions about my career and where I wanted to focus my energies. I joined a former colleague at a start-up – total green field opportunity to do good work and affect change, but quite variable and the potential for insanity high. Big leap for me, but I know I can do it. I’ve been here for just over two weeks, and there are definite challenges here, as there are everywhere. The difference? I’m BEING ME at work.
So, thank you for your wonderful book and those few moments of insight. I’m going to start seeding the concepts in Bury My Heart here and see what grows.
Hopefully our paths will cross again.
Happy New Year from the slap Company – A testimonial to end 2011
Cheers,
Regina
Regina Robo O’Brien
Director, Learning and Organizational Development
Wait a minute — what has happened to us? People are afraid all the time — a low, humming anxiety. We’re 
