I finished the last of my speaking and business travel last night.

The light at the end of the tunnel is getting very bright.

Of course, I have that book thing I have to finish (it’s due Dec. 30) and I have some reading to catch up on. But no real thinking or hard work for 12 whole days.

And, starting tonight, it’s all family, all holidays, all the time. Bring on the cheesecake, ebelskivers, and wine!

And, this week, I have lots of fun topics for you. Dogs and seals and kids, oh my!

5. I Gave My Kids a Terrible Present. Jimmy Kimmel strikes again! He asked parents to give their kids an early Christmas gift. But it had to be something terrible. Make sure you stay until the end. It’ll be worth it. I promise.

4. Woman Finds Baby Seal On Couch. Holy crap! I want one! Wait until you see the picture of this seal snoozing on a New Zealand woman’s couch. So. Freaking. Cute.

3. My Three-Month Facebook Dialogue with a Facebook Scammer from Malaysia Pretending to Be a Beautiful Woman. You would think the title does this article justice, but no. It’s even better than you think. It gets really good when it reaches September so happy reading!

2. The Real Story Behind Apple’s ‘Think Different’ Campaign. This article is written for Forbes by one of the creative directors who worked on the Apple “Think Different” campaign in 1997. While I think the author takes a lot of liberties in claiming the ad campaign changed Apple, it’s an excellent read. Thanks to Jason Konopinski for the find.

1. Casper, the Bath-Loving Dog. This is the feel good video of the week. I swear I’m going to try it with Jack Bauer. I’m just afraid of the mess it’s going to make afterwards.

Happy last weekend of shopping!

Today’s guest post is written by David Horne.

You want to build an incredible brand. This is one reason you became a marketing professional or started a company in the first place.

Who doesn’t want to create the next Google, Apple, Nike, or Coke?

Who doesn’t want to drive an incredible brand, one people love, that affects lives, and changes the world?

 “We are no doubt in the Great Age of the Brand.” – Tom Peters

Before you can build a brand that has market ubiquity, fosters loyalty, and promotes advocacy, the proper foundation must be set.

That foundation is credibility.

Credibility is defined as “the quality or power of inspiring belief.” There is no way to build an incredible brand without trust.

All great brands do this. They inspire us to believe. We trust them.

There are two types of credibility: Current credibility and past credibility

Current credibility is earned by delivering on promises. Take Zappos (cliché, I know, but hang in there) for example. They have current credibility because they inspire customers to trust them with their promise and delivery of amazing service.

You can also look at Evernote. They have current credibility because they provide an application that helps people remember stuff. It does what it says, and the story they tell is true.

Past credibility means trust has been built during the course of years or generations. This doesn’t make a brand exempt from staying relevant to its audience, but it gives them stored equity in the trust bank of our minds. Proctor & Gamble is a great example of this. They built credibility years ago with Tide, Crest, and Ivory, and have carried it through for decades.

On a smaller scale, in my hometown is a place called El’s Drive-In. For more than 50 years, they have served hamburgers and shrimp burgers. Even though all the chain burger joints have popped up, they still have packed crowds from credibility they earned since the sixties.

And then you have established credibility. From this foundation you can build an incredible brand in three parts:

1. Instill confidence.
2. Show competence.
3. Be consistent.

1. Instill Confidence

To become incredible you must instill confidence with your audience.  Apple makes stuff that works. Chanel gives people a sense of class and sophistication. People must have confidence in the brand and in what it will do for them. Marketers mistakenly tout features all day long but instilling confidence is a product of the benefits.

2. Show Competence

Let’s face it, if your product or organization doesn’t perform, it will starve. Beyond that, incredible brands can do something better or at least in a more unique way than the others. Southwest Airlines showed how an efficient airline should be run.  Google showed that search engines can find what you are seeking. There is no room for a brand that doesn’t deliver what the market wants.

3. Be Consistent

Like the company or not, McDonald’s built an incredible brand on this principle. Consumers like predictability. They want expectations to be met or exceeded. Tiffany and Co. executes this with their blue box. Starbucks executes it with espressos and coffee. Continuity must be present in every interaction with the customer.

“Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith, and perseverance to create a brand.” - David Ogilvy 

We have talked about laying a foundation of credibility. And have looked at three steps to moving from credible to incredible by instilling confidence, being consistent, and showing competence. Now, focus your marketing efforts on contributing to one or several of these elements. Everything you do should move you one step closer to becoming incredible.

What are you doing to make your brand incredible?

David Horne blogs at davidhorne.me.  He is the co-founder of the marketing firm West Hall Media. David is also an adjunct professor of marketing and social media at Greensboro College, event speaker, and former professional golfer.

Today’s guest post is written by Anne Weiskopf.

Apologizing is hard to do. As Elton John so memorably summed up; “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”

But sorry can be the smartest word for your brand if it’s sincere, delivered in a timely fashion, and if concrete steps are outlined to right the wrong.

What makes one apology more successful than another is the subject of a growing body of research. A key finding is that it’s much easier to forgive a perceived mistake then an intentional act.

Let’s look at a few examples.

On July 12^th Netflix sent an email to their subscribers telling them, that in September, they would be splitting DVD and streaming into two separate businesses and costs would double for their current service levels.

There was no further communication to customers until September 18^th when CEO Reed Hastings issued an apology framed as an “explanation and some reflections.”

The apology not only fell flat, it actually enraged many in the Netflix community who viewed it as an attempt by the company to justify their upcoming changes. Reed’s apology was too late as Netflix had already lost one million customers and suffered a 50 percent drop in their valuation since July.

Last week, Netflix quietly retreated, announcing via email there would not be any changes to their current business model.

An effective apology, especially during a crisis, is one of the hardest but most important roles a CEO plays; it can determine a company’s ability to survive the incident. In the best case scenario, excellent crisis management can actually prove to be a positive for business. There is no better case study then the 1982 Johnson & Johnson Tylenol recall.

Last Thursday Mike Lazaridis, President of RIM took to YouTube to apologize for the company’s worldwide outage. The apology was four days into this major crisis and Lazaridis appeared wooden, and as if he were reading from a script. While Lazaridis did lay out the specific steps that RIM was putting in place to fix the problem, he missed an opportunity to tell customers they would not be charged for service during the period of Blackberry’s outage.

Given that lines were already forming at Apple for the iPhone 4S release the very next day, and with Apple’s iOS5 getting rave reviews, this should have been a no brainer. With RIM’s stock down 60 percent for the year, the stakes for Lazaridis were too high to have missed the mark.

Know when you owe someone an apology and give it.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock (or a meatball), you’re probably familiar with the kerfuffle surrounding Ragu Dads. Ragu recently launched a social media campaign targeting influential dads via Twitter. Among them was C.C Chapman, well-known blogger and author. Chapman was offended by the campaign and a lot of back and forth ensued. Whether C.C. was being a brand bully is up for debate; the fact that Ragu should have extended a direct and sincere apology isn’t.

Ragu eventually commented  on a blog post more favorable to their point of view, gave a non-specific apology, and then plugged their new campaign – “and if this week has confirmed anything, it’s that moms and dads (and grandmoms and grandads, too) want to have a word on dinner — and all are welcome to join in the conversation.”

Yes, apologizing is hard but a good apology is smart. It is also good for business. So how do you do it well?

Six keys to a great apology.

1. Address the issue quickly.
• “Silence is not an option in social media” – C.C. Chapman
2. Even if it is not directly your fault, apologize for it anyway.
• “No, you no longer control your brand and yes, you’re still 100% responsible for its success”  - Duane Primozich
3. Intent matters; people are more likely to forgive an honest mistake.
• Apologize, don’t justify.
4. Identify the steps that are being (or will be) taken to fix the problem.
5. Pick the right medium for you to be most effective. A well written apology trumps a badly delivered video message.
6. Continuously monitor all social and non-social channels so you can continue to address the issue further if needed.

What do you think? Would you add anything to this list?

Thanks to   _Noura for the image, Creative Commons.

Anne Weiskopf provides sales and business development services to agencies and companies who are in the social media and technology space. She blogs at Rip Off the Roof.

Are you joining our webinar this week?
Social Media and Media Relations Measurement
with Johna Burke of BurrellesLuce moderated by Gini Dietrich.
Thursday October 27 at 11:00 a.m. CT.
This webinar is $50 and you can register here.

Steve Jobs resigned last week

Spending quite a bit of time on the speaking circuit, I constantly hear from leaders that they’re afraid to use the web for business reasons because they don’t want the competition to know what they’re doing.

A Page from the Apple Book

The consumer electronics industry is built around copying the successful products that Apple produces.

When the iPhone came out, there were copycat touch-screen phones on the market within months. Apple blazed the trail.

The iPad created a tablet category that didn’t exist two years ago and now every mobile company on earth is building one. Apple blazed the trail.

Amazon, Google, and BlackBerry now have app stores. Apple blazed the trail.

Microsoft opened 11 retail stores this year. Apple blazed the trail.

Blaze the Trail

Apple also is the most wealthy company in the United States. They have more cash than our government. And they blaze the trail for their competitors.

They aren’t scared of the competition figuring out how they do things. They blaze the trail.

Read what Om Malik says on his blog, GigaOm:

If you want to change something, you have to be patient and take the long view. If Apple and Steve’s incredible comeback teaches us something, it’s that when you are right and the world doesn’t see it that way, you just have to be patient and wait for the world to change its mind.

Today, we are living in a world that’s about taking short-term decisions: CEOs who pray to at the altar of the devil called quarterly earnings, companies that react to rivals, politicians who are only worried about the coming election cycle and leaders who are in for the near-term gain.

Taking the long view is hard work, especially in today’s world. Letting our competition peek into our minds, our companies, and our R&D is scary.

Wouldn’t you rather blaze the trail than try to keep up?

But How?

Last week I quoted Jeff Jarvis and how he thinks we’re moving to a jobless future.

A future without jobs because, as leaders, we’re waiting for the economy to rebound so we can fill spots that have been vacated in the past three years.

A future without jobs because, as leaders, we’re afraid participating on the web is going to give our secrets to our competitors.

A future without jobs because, as leaders, we’re afraid to blaze the trail. We’re afraid of doing things differently. We fear change.

So buck up! The only way we’re going to help the economy rebound is to take a page from the Apple book … and learn from Steve Jobs.

Don’t be afraid to let the competition know what you’re doing. You’ll be looking forward and they’ll be scrambling to keep up. Blaze the trail.

This first ran as my weekly column in Crain’s Chicago Business.

Guest post by John Heaney, principal at Orange Envelopes.

The National Science Foundation released a disturbing study recently that revealed that only nine percent of American companies engaged in any product or process innovation during the three-year study period (2006-08).

Frankly, I’m not surprised with the near absence of corporate innovation because I see so few companies that encourage a culture of innovation.

Too many CEOs focus exclusively on improving financial metrics – increasing earnings and keeping a tight control over costs. Few understand their corporate value can be linked directly to their embrace of innovation and their capacity to constantly renew themselves.

That’s exactly what Apple has been doing, and its devotion to designing new customer experiences centered around technology has contributed to a 1,300 percent rise in its stock price in the past 10 years and a market capitalization that exceeds that of Microsoft.

Apple keeps innovating because it has intentionally created a culture of innovation. The company’s commitment to design and innovation is built into its DNA and enables it to foster, create, and execute radical ideas and remain in a perpetual state of reinvention.

Commitment to design and innovation is not the purview exclusively of large companies. Small companies actually have the capacity to move faster and more nimbly than their larger competitors, and it’s significantly easier to adopt cultural imperatives in a small company than a large one.

So, what are the essential cultural elements that your company needs to adopt to encourage innovation?

Purpose – Business leaders who can articulate a corporate vision with the right language can inspire their employees to perform heroic feats. Companies such as Apple, Nike, Amazon, Herman Miller, and 3M are all design and innovation leaders that inspire their employees with clear corporate visions of who they are, why they’re important, and where they’re headed.

They don’t inspire with challenges of nine percent top line growth or the extension of an existing product line. Their vision is much broader: They want to change the world in their own unique ways. And they believe they are the agents for that change.

Challenge – You can’t gain a competitive advantage from doing business as usual in the same way that virtually every one of your competitors operates. Innovators and design thinkers create new solutions to problems that other companies are unwilling or unable to address. Take a look at every touch point in your organization and ask yourself if each one is delightful and memorable for your customers.

Why should calls to help centers be frustrating? Why don’t you have instructional videos posted for every one of your products? How can your packaging be reduced and improved? You’re surrounded by challenges if you’re brave enough to take them on. And when you succeed, your corporate differences will be clearly defined.

Encouragement – Leaders in innovative companies encourage their employees to try new things and to test new ideas despite the certainty that taking on challenging projects will inevitably lead to some failures.

Apple had monumental flops with the Lisa and the Newton. Nike had divisive fair trade issues to overcome. Even legendary 3M went through a lean period of innovation when its focus drifted in the early 2000s.

But like all successful design companies, those who emerge with the greatest successes are the ones that encourage, embrace, and celebrate failure. They just ensure that they failed fast and learn lessons from each disappointment. Failure expands knowledge, builds courage, reveals your strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately makes success a little sweeter.

John Heaney’s professional experience has centered around marketing, branding, customer experience design, strategic communications, and business development. His current professional endeavors are focused on developing strategic digital marketing programs that integrate compelling social media components. His perspectives are captured on his blog.

The people at Good Morning America feel Steve should have deleted one particular email.  After a college senior, Ms. Isaacs, late for a paper deadline, didn’t hear back from the Apple media relations team started to panic so she did the next logical thing and emailed Steve directly. Why not?  Well, Steve answered back and it went on for a few.  View the video below for the details.

There are three lessons here.

First, your job as a PR or communications professional is to make your company look good.  You can do this by simply responding to inquiries and answering emails.  We now see how things can get ugly when you don’t do your job properly.

The second lesson is to give Steve a break.  Yes, “leave us alone” is probably not the best response, but he answered the girl!  She could have written a paper on that alone.  Title: “Billionaire, Visionary, Entrepreneur, and Humanitarian Answers Emails Directly.”

Third and foremost, quit feeling sorry for this girl.  It’s making me sick to see the media flock to her side.  After hearing how many times she called and reading her emails I find her just as annoying and would like to say worse.  She has no right to expect anything from anyone.  And frankly, her emails sound pretty snotty, if I do say so myself.

Whose team are you on?  Team Jobs or Team Isaacs?

Guest post by Larry Spada the vice president of branding and marketing at Outdoor Living Brands.

Apple changed my life. When I saw my first Macintosh computer in the mid-1980s, I was speechless.

My only exposure to computers at the time was those ugly, old, ochre cathode ray streams of digits beaming from clunky monitors – or those big monster server rooms that we typically see in spy movies.

So there I was, in my buddy’s office, looking at this unusual beige box with a seven-or-so-inch monitor. And he was showing me a slowly bouncing, rotating 3D black-and-white checkerboard-patterned ball.

“How the heck are they doing that,” I asked myself – this coming from a then copywriter who used a manual typewriter to practice his craft.

Fast forward a few years later, and more than 40 Apple product purchases since, (I’ve owned virtually every make and model issued under the Apple brand, some a few times over). Today, I find myself leading the brand strategy effort for Outdoor Living Brands, the world’s only franchise company solely focused on outdoor living. And Apple is still surrounding me, constantly.

Working with 200 franchisees around the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, and Kuwait, it’s great fun helping these entrepreneurial folks bring their business plans and visions of franchise growth to life through a variety of outbound and inbound marketing tactics.

Speaking of the latter – helping businesses “get found” – I always say the same thing during each marketing training session: “Buy an iPhone.”

I have found the iPhone to be the quintessential gadget for doing your best work in social media.

Having Gini Dietrich from Arment Dietrich work with us last year, we put together a comprehensive social media strategy and road map for all of our franchise brands to follow. All of our franchisees now realize why blogging, social media, search engine optimization, etc. is so important – and how to participate. But to do it correctly, and efficiently, I continually tell them that they need the right tool. And the iPhone fits the bill, perfectly.

I encourage our franchisees to think of the iPhone as a natural extension of their body, always at hand to shoot a video, snap a photo, dictate a blog headline, or record a stream of consciousness for a social media post.

Pat and Laura Harders from Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Northern Virginia have been operating like this for some time. They attribute 30 percent of their annual revenue from social media and inbound marketing.

Eric Kent from Archadeck of Charlotte is doing the same thing. Virtually unfamiliar with social media before January, he’s taken the proverbial bull by the horns and is doing an awesome job with blog posts and YouTube videos, all connected to each other via backlinks to the various web properties he has in his synchronized outreach and inbound mix.

Next up? The iPad, of course. I’m now encouraging our franchisees to use the iPad to showcase their beautiful before-and-after designs of outdoor living spaces and exterior illumination designs with digital photos they’ve taken, using a slight finger flick to open stacks of stunning photo galleries to showcase their best work during their design consultations.

As for the new iOS4 platform, I’m thinking of how awesome it would be for our franchisees to stay in touch with FaceTime video chat – a great way to help design consultants in the field stay emotionally connected to the franchisee leader.

And no, Steve Jobs is not paying me a commission. Live long and prosper with Apple all around you.

Larry Spada is vice president of branding and marketing for Outdoor Living Brands and author of the blog Web Wise Rants and Raves.

Several months ago, in typical Apple fashion, there was a leak (I am sure it was a complete mistake, uhhhhh). Apple was going to be announcing the launch of the iPad. Like all celebrity gossip magazines, it happened to be true (I think the Enquirer is more accurate than the NYT, but that is just me). I would like to thank Apple for giving me at least 20 jokes in regards to the naming of it.

My first thought was, I have a MacBook Pro Laptop, I have a desktop, and an iPhone, what on earth would I want with an oversized iPhone which I assumed its main use would be coming down Mount Sinai with one in either hand right after I parted the Red Sea.

Then I learned that it will not have the ability to read Adobe Flash. This is a gigantic turn off for me. Think of all of those Web sites that use Flash in some capacity, they will be littered with blank boxes. Apple, whose entire lifetime was designed to make the Internet beautiful, is now making the Internet full of broken boxes. I mean, even Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) can do that. The alternative is HTML5. The new player in things animation. The only problem is that it is not fully browser supported, which means a lot of developers won’t learn it yet. I mean we are still dealing with people on IE6 even IE8 which has limited support and a lot of hacks.

So, I am annoyed with Apple’s decision not to allow Flash, even though it could in a heart beat. My initial reaction was to completely boycott it until they did, although that is doubtful. Not that I am a huge Flash lover, just annoyed more or less.

Then, this week I started looking at the new applications. I think it is neat that you can read books on it like the Kindle, not sure the screen will be as reader friendly, but that was a bonus. Then, a few days ago around the rumor mill, it was said that Netflix created an app that will allow you to stream movies directly on it. Okay, getting better. Not currently a Pandora subscriber, but after seeing the screenshots of the new app and interface for the iPad I went hmmmmm.

I wasn’t completely sold, but now I was at least open to it. Then I started to think of my job and how my complete lack of organization has cost me tens of thousands of hours in my lifetime of searching for something. I started to think how cool it would be to have it in place of a legal pad, to keep all of my notes with me on all of my clients that I visit. I rarely take my laptop. I also thought of how I could formulate thoughts and have a toy on the train ride home. Then, I remember, ooooops no stylus. I am sure some 3rd party something will come out with one in a month or two, but just not the same.

In conclusion, I am not sold on the iPad yet, but if they make these changes below, where do I enter my credit card number……….

1. Flash Support (seriously Apple, your ego is writing checks well okay you can cash them)
2. Expandable memory. It could EASILY have an extra memory flash slot. I know, I know, Apple wants me to spend more money.
3. Two things at once. To really use it for work, I want to be able to have an email open as well as a notepad, browser or other device. Not practical to have to open and close things. apparently this version can’t walk and chew gum.
4. A stylus. As a designer, I sketch stuff all over the place and lose 80% of them. It would be amazing to have a true stylus where I can sketch and handwrite.

Looks like I will be waiting for version 2, 3 or maybe 4.

So I decided to look into the reasons behind Apple not disclosing his health issues before jumping to conclusions.

Turns out I still feel the same way I did initially…and following is why.

* On July 31, 2004, Jobs had surgery on his pancreas, nine months after being diagnosed and keeping it a secret from everyone but a small group of confidants.

* At the time, Apple entertained no questions about Jobs’s health, citing his need for privacy.

* In early January of this year, Jobs said he had a hormone imbalance that was “relatively simple and straightforward” to treat.

* A week later, he announced the issue was more complex and said he was taking a leave of absence.

* Two days ago we learn that the complex matter required a liver transplant.

* Jobs is notoriously secretive and controlling when it comes to his relationship with the media.

* Apple has drawn criticism from some shareholders over what they have called “limited disclosure of Mr. Jobs’s health problems.”

* Jobs is a leader, an executive, and a celebrity, who is widely viewed as the company’s irreplaceable leader, personally responsible for everything from the creation of the iPod to the selection of the chef in the company cafeteria.

I disagree that Apple and its board think Jobs’s health is a private matter. He has made himself a public figure synonymous with the brand; he is the face of the company. Many believe his health is instrumental in the stock performance of the company. While the U.S. has strict medical privacy laws, Jobs’s role as the company’s visionary trumps his right to privacy.

Avoiding questions about his weight last year. Telling employees, stakeholders, and his board he had a hormone imbalance. Announcing, just a week later, he had to take leave because it’s more serious than they thought. Then disclosing a liver transplant just days before he returns to work. And this is all in the past 12 months.

This screams dishonesty and non-transparency – especially in a day and age that we all are focused on transparency and authenticity – while using his right to privacy as an excuse.

As a communication professional, I recommend they focus on honesty and transparency, especially if Jobs comes back as the chief executive. If he really wants privacy and refuses to be transparent about both his personal and professional lives, it’s time to provide a clear succession plan and put other spokespeople in front of the cameras.

Until then, I quit if I’m on his executive team or am at his table as his communication professional. This is dishonest communication, no matter which way you cut it.