Mike Wagner's done it again. He's lobbed a timely brand-centric post linking moments of truth in the family with brand moments of truth in business. He cites the mom-delivered line "That's how we do things in this family" as the ultimate brand management dictum.

While Mike reminded me in an offline conversation that many companies (dis)function like families, I found myself wondering how would we act if our moms actually worked alongside us every day?

I wish every corporate communications pro would read at least one short segment in Robert Scoble's interview in Communication World. In answer to a question about organizations being threatened by blogs, the A-lister answers:

"The fact of the matter is (corporations are) out of control and they're just holding on to a memory. When I talk about blogging to big companies, I see fear: I see a memory of the way the world used to be."

For more about the article - the online version of Communication World is not posted yet - check out IABC's engaging blog, IABC Commons.

Brand ownership isn't easy. In fact, its very difficult because we've all been taught to suppress our natural creativity. The only time we take our eyes off the bottom line is when we wrap our hands around what Hugh McLeod calls business porn - the stories of great brands, great businesses and great lives in the pages of Fast Company, In Search of Excellence, and others - dreaming of immersing ourselves in the self-satisfaction of a good brand, an invigorating work environment and or job that doesn't make us puke.

Stan DeVaughn is singing a sweet tune in his latest post over at Branding Post blog. In his post about the long distance between "vast vision and a half-vast go-to-market effort," he zooms in on the lack of a brand. "Hint: It's not about the logo" he writes.

In no other business, in my humble opinion, is brand more clearly defined as a reputation than in the auto repair business.

That's a sensitive subject today because I took our 2000 Town and Country Van in for an oil change and a brake inspection and found out that I need new brakes. If I really do need brakes, it's better to know now than as we roll down a mountain in Colorado next week. If I don't really need brakes, it's par for the course for an industry that carries plenty of dubious baggage.

I'm backtracking on my earlier post that soccer's got a brand problem. If we use Kathy Sierra's love/hate model, I think soccer - specifically soccer in the U.S. - will be just fine. MLS fans are showing up, teams are starting to make some money and the soccer-haters are besides themselves.

Did you see them come out of the woodwork in the aftermath of the Men's National Team 0-3 drubbing in their World Cup opener. They fell all over themselves announcing that this proves that soccer will never make it here.

Professional organizations that support communicators - such as IABC, of which I've been a member for a good part of the past 20 years - are always saying that communicators need to earn a seat at the management table. They need to support the organization's goals, speak management’s language and get serious about business. If they don't, the line goes, they'll be seen only as tacticians for the rest of their lowly careers.

Ron Shewchuk recently posted on this subject and, if you're involved with corporate communications either inside or outside the organization, I think it's worth your time to read his comments. They're really insightful.

Here’s a taste:

We managed to survive a six-day vacation across three states without once stopping at the Golden Arches, but we did meet a zombie at an Ogallala, Nebraska Wendy's.

It was a clear summer evening, and darkness hung in the air as we entered the largely empty Wendy's restaurant to get a late night meal. After standing at the counter for a couple of minutes, Wes stepped up, looked at the cash register and then yelled at someone in the back, saying "You didn't sign out at the register." He then turn to us and asked us if he could take our order.

If you want to combine your marketing interests with your sports interests, check out the Sports Logo Pundit Blog. The guy's admittedly an amateur design critic, and he's sometimes a bit harsh in his commentary - such as on the Connecticut Defenders logo pictured here - but he's not afraid to share his opinions. Besides, logos are really subjective, and everyone has an opinion.

In my last post, I wrote about truth. I think truth is often a casualty in business, a victim of ego. Few people are willing to admit the truth when it makes them look bad, or has the potential to look bad. I've been wrong too many times in my career to put my ego before the truth.

In my third job, I was the communications director for a dairy association. My expertise was writing newsletters. In this case, my main responsibility was to explain the value of the dairy check-off - a USDA mandated expenses dairy farmers paid to support generic dairy advertising. My secondary job was to promote ice cream, milk and other dairy products. Now, I'm a suburban kid through and through, always living in middle class neighborhoods in between the tough inner city and the hard working country. While I learned to appreciate the very hard work of dairy farmers and others involved in production agriculture, I did a lot of on-the-job training.

As an editor of a small trade magazine, I learned that everybody has a story. Even though I was a freshly graduated communications major, it was my job to figure it out.

I stumbled across a job at a small publishing firm in Collierville, Tennessee after I graduated. I was trying to return to the Memphis area because I was born there and through it would be an interesting place to settle down. The mom-and-pop publishing firm posed unique challenges because mom didn't get along with pop, and would drop in every few months to mess up everything in the name of "this is how we've always done it", and then leave in a huff for us to clean up. In between these visitations we would work hard to create three pretty good trade magazines covering the upholstered furniture, casegoods furniture and building materials industries.

First story: A few nights ago, I wandered into the kitchen for a little late night snack and some unfamilar, unpleasant odor hit me. When I asked my wife if she smelled it, she said she thought she smelled something earlier, and that it might be in the refrigerator drip tray. Now I didn't even know the refrigerator had a drip tray, so I proceeded to remove the little grill at the bottom of the fridge as my wife instructed, and then slowly pulled out the most disgusting puddle of hellish liquid this side of The French Quarter. Holding it as far away from my face as possible, I carried it outside, to the curb and then flushed it with the hose for a full five minutes. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect something that vile to be within feet of the food I eat. When I returned, my wife informed me that the water comes from the self-defrosting fridge and that she has to empty it two or three times a year, particularly with the humidity is up and the water doesn't evaporate.

It was in my second job, as an editor of a company publication for a large insurance company, that I first learned the power of truth. And what people will do to avoid it.

I was writing a typical article about a committee's marketing planning efforts. I asked what the team was doing, who was on the team and when they expected to finish the work, and I got a blank stare from the manager who was my source. She said she didn't want to put a date out there because the team might held accountable to that date.

That's when I first learned the truth about truth: it's a moving target.

And I think that's why so many brands are so bland. Company's say one thing and act entirely different. There's no accountability to the brand.

We were munching down on our $3.95 piece of chocolate cake in a small bakery along the Blue River running through Breckenridge, Colorado last week. Eating didn't slow us down from making plans for our next meal, and we asked the cute chick behind the bakery counter if a certain restaurant was any good. She gushed, "Yes, it is." and nothing more.

That's the kind of less-than-friendly responses we got from people in this tourist-dependent mountain town. The website says that friends are welcome, so it was quite a shock to see the brand disconnect between the communication and the reality. Perhaps it was simply that time of the month, er, season - they must have been dog-tired from the winter ski season and hadn't yet geared up for the summer season that, by the closed attractions, must start around June 15th.

I went to a going-away party for my wife’s co-worker and discovered the power and longevity of a personal brand.

At the party, a guy name Jerry sat down next to me and introduced himself. He had spent a lifetime in various manufacturing jobs, and even did a little marketing, so that’s what we talked about. When I shared that my father worked his whole career in manufacturing, at International Harvester in the Quad Cities (of Iowa and Illinois), he cocked his head quizzically and asked his name. When I told him by dad was John True, his eyebrows shot up and his eyes practically bugged out. Knowing that my dad had a reputation as a tough man with whom you didn’t want to tangle, I thought I was staring at a victim and asked with great trepidation “where you one of the guys on his good side or his bad side?”

I stopped by one of my favorite sandwich shops tonight, a Blimpie owned by one of the most engaging franchisees I’ve ever run into. He and his wife work behind the counter at their two stores because they’ve seen what happens when minimum-wage zombies are put in charge of a business.

It was slow, as it has been every time I’ve visited in the past year or so, and I got to talk to him about his business. Traffic and sales have been lousy for over a year, and the high price of gas has killed store traffic even more lately. He’s spent thousands of dollars redesigning the store in bright colors, and keeps the place spotless.

The May 2006 issue of Fast Company hit my mailbox yesterday, and it got out of the blocks quickly with “Fast Talk: voices from the creative front lines,” interviews with five brand warriors from the world of sports. Except for the cheesy photo of the Oakland Raiders’ Patty Herrera wearing shoulder pads, it was a great look into the strategies these pros employ to make their brands different, inviting, relevant and truthful.

First of all, I'm a soccer fan. I've played the game - slowly and rather awkwardly - for more than 20 years and watched it with interest for about 10 years. It's a sport, not unlike baseball, that takes a lot of experience to understand. I watch a little baseball but I don't get anywhere near as much out of it as real baseball aficionados. And while I don't know all the intricacies of soccer, I imagine I know a lot more about that game that the average American.

On the recent trip to Colorado, I had the opportunity to see how two organizations use their manufacturing operation as a brand building tool, and realize that there are more than one way to tell a story.

First up was the Coors plant in Golden, Colorado. I'm a huge Coors fan and really looked forward to seeing the plant and tasting the samples! When we first arrived at a well-signed parking lot, we quickly got on a small tour bus that covered several blocks of Golden. The driver told us a few things about Golden but we couldn't here it over the bad public address system.

The doorbell rang, earlier tonight and a neighbor, wearing a harness filled with a little baby, asked me to come restart her mower. When I arrived, I quickly started the mower and proceeded to mow the lawn, not wishing to see the tiny mom with the tinier baby struggle with the mower. Within a few seconds, I started wondering how she had accomplished the one trip around the lawn before the mower stopped. Pushing the mower was shear torture. I rested at the end of each trip around the yard, wondering why it was so difficult. After completing about one-quarter of the yard, I stopped to rest, and commented that I'd never used a mower this hard to push. As she started to walk over to see what my problem was, I realized what my problem was: it was a self-propelled mower, which I had not yet engaged. With the simple push of a lever, the mower practically did the job itself.

Via Jennifer Rice's What's Your Brand Mantra, Mark Hurst's brilliant little primer on the difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience:

The Brand Warrior was on vacation last week, driving across Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado for a few days in the mountains. You don't earn the title "brand warrior" by shutting down for a few days, so brand observations kept coming along with the miles on the family minivan.

My email to a Popular Scrapbooking Magazine:

Hello

I'm very, very frustrated with your online subscription service. I moved six months ago and changed my shipping address at that time. For the past six months I've been receiving Scrapbooking Etc at my current address, no problem. This past month I didn't receive my magazine so I checked your online subscription service using my account #. Turns out it expired (this surprised me) but the address on the page was my old address.

Call me a language fascist, but surely if you're planning on adopting a CRM strategy you'd employ someone who can write with at least a modicum of eloquence to manage the communication?

Homecall+ clearly don't agree. I received this email from them today:

Hi there,

I'm Ayesha the Sales Manager here at HomeCall+, and this is your 1st weekly Newsletter from myself.

As a valued customer of ours already I feel that it would be beneficial to you to recieve my weeekly Newsletter and be kept up to date on all our exciting products & services.

Therefore over the next couple of weeks I will be emailing you our informative weekly Newsletter showing you what other service's we do, introducing you to the team here at HomeCall+ and more importantly how we can save you money.

hands full
Originally uploaded by benbarren Topix is a quite different beast to Technorati, but by focusing on solving the "local news" business has a much healthier dynamic. It's interesting to see how they source their index of local content, and something other newspaper groups might learn from. From Local Onliner on Topix's evolution :

(Breaking news from the WGA - the AMPTP has agreed to come back to the table on November 26th. Now, let's hope they are prepared to make a fair deal. This is progress. Everyone wants to go back to work. Everyone wants fair compensation for their work.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 16, 2007

Day one of the Charity Garage Sale put on by the Settlement Home for children.

Books purchased: $19.00 (good to like-new condition)

Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston