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a thing called redwire

Neeraj wrote a little about Redwire and being an entrepreneur. 

He pointed to this piece we just did for a good friend and client with a great business model and skills to match. 

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I promise not to get all Obama crazy on this blog…

However, I can’t believe how well done this video is…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk&rel=1&border=1]

I couldn’t turn it off. 

Imagine building your entire brand on the hope for something better. On the hope that we want to take care of each other. On the reality that if we don’t actively participate in our future, the future will be dictated to us.

Sound like anyone you know?

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Obama picks up 3 more states

One of the many differences between Barack and Hillary are their websites. 

Who in the world designed Barack’s site? It’s beautiful.

It’s clear, from the get go, Barack has had a very clear strategy on the web reaching out to a younger more web 2.0 audience. And it’s worked. I can’t recite verbatim the numbers I’ve read over the last few weeks, but it’s clear, he’s been right on with creating a grassroots campaign through the under 40 crowd and has raised insane amounts of money, with insane numbers of contributors on the web.

It becomes clear when you look at the two sites next to each other. While Clinton’s site isn’t horrible, I find things more distracting on the site. There’s so many levels trying to attract attention, that I inevitably don’t land anywhere.

These sites actually match up with their personalities.

Clinton’s is a bit louder, Obama’s a bit more serene.

Clinton’s tries to have the gooey web 2.0 feel, but misses the mark with a color palette that is bit too traditional.

Obama’s nails the color palette and has an ethereal feel which really does fall on the message of hope that he tries to convey.

I’m not announcing anything new, but our web strategy at the church will be evolving over the course of 2008. I hope we land on our target audience a bit more solidly, and offer more reasons to keep coming back…

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The Dissemination of Brand Ideas and the Long Tail of Brand Communication

There’s a great new manifesto over at Change This.

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Innovation vs. Renovation Part 2 – renovation is harder…

One thing I learned early on from reading the Art of Innovation is that renovation is often much harder than innovation.

It’s one thing to have a problem that nobody has solved yet. Your solution is the best solution by definition of being the only solution. In the case of the grocery store shopping cart that IDEO was charged with renovating, the challenge was clear: Make the best shopping cart ever. The problem however was deeper: Rethink the grocery shopping experience so that the design and functionality of the shopping cart matches the reality of your shopping experience or makes it a more desirable experience.

So they had to dive in and rethink things from the moment you walk in the store. Whether you’re the urban hipster, the soccer mom, or the daily shopper. The results were drammatic. The traditional shopping cart took on the form of this multi-compartment hodgepodge of speciaiized functionality.I don’t think it was that great.In fact, it looked bulky and awkward. Spaceage and untouchable….(yet fascinating).

The reality is the traditional shopping cart meets most of the needs we ask of it. And even if IDEO’s cart is a good design, the awkwardness of it compared with something I’m used to, makes it harder to adopt in it’s renovated state.

Last year when I started renovating my kitchen, I would have begged for a blank slate to work with. Not bad wiring, banged up walls and 5 layers of flooring. It would have been much easier to start with nothing but studs, but instead, it was a renovation job. It required rethinking how to make something old into something new. Something broken into something that works. Something stylishly outdated into something fresh, modern and visually appealing.

It took sweat. And it’s still not done.

Renovation can be much harder than innovation. 

<p>How well does the church renovate?

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The Art of Innovation – 5 Step Process

I’m currently reading “The Art of Innovation“ by Tom Kelley.Tom and his Brother David are head honchos at IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm. 
Through the years, they’ve developed a simple strategy for unleashing innovation at IDEO. It boils down to this:

1. UNDERSTAND – not only the market, the client and the technology, but also the perceived constraints on the problem. 
2. OBSERVE – Real people in real life. Not focus groups. Real people trying to tackle the problems you want to help them with. 
3. VISUALIZE – The brainstorming session. If I was faced with the problem, what challenges would I be weighed down with and what are creative ways to solve that problem.
4. EVALUATE & REFINE – What works, what doesn’t, what confuses people, what they seem to like. Test, Modify, Retest.
5. IMPLEMENT – If the idea is great  and you can’t implement it, than the idea is of little value.

It’s not rocket science. It’s just about having a managed approach to Creativity and having a roadmap to take the next big thing from beginning to end.  Any thoughts?  

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Brand Strategy: Target Audience

Through some discussions at MinistryCom last week, a few people have asked me about Sanctuary’s Brand Strategy…

Here’s the first page of Sanctuary’s Brand Strategy defining our target audience. This is very broad, and the strategy narrows from there, but here it is.

In words and pictures:

Download the Brand Strategy Target Audience PDF