What's in a Name

One of my favourite organizations just re-branded. GAP Adventures became G Adventures on October 1st. They dropped the 'ap' (there's a joke there I'm certain) They modified their name for reasons I'm not clear on and I think as a consumer and avid follower of them, it's a bad idea. Here's why.

Sometimes when we see this type of change it's to reflect changes the company has gone gone through - two companies becoming one, or taking on whole new services. That is understandable and reflects to the audience that things have been modified. The consumer of their services should modify expectations as well. Examples are all around us and pop up daily. Other organizations re-brand but don't change their name, and one of the mildly more interesting things in the travel business is to see new livery on airplanes - the enormous expense of re-painting hundreds of airplanes and pieces of ground equipment as "the blue hue previously used didn't convey the global aspirations of our traveller", or some such spin. Laughable unless you're a shareholder.

So, the marketer in me understands and applauds a re-brand or refresh when appropriate, or when there's just a need to get some attention.

Name changes however are seismic in marketing terms - literally in a SEO sense, and figuratively in a recognition sense. What is a Google, an Oracle, or a Microsoft anyway. Think about the words themselves, rather than the organizations they've come to reflect. It's hard isn't it ? That's because we look beyond the words once the companies are established and just see the organizations. If you're truly established in a marketing sense and had some good foundational ideas on branding, your name becomes synonymous with your space - Ski-doo being my favourite example. That's aspirational for marketers in the brand role.

GAP Adventures is one of those companies that sets themselves apart from the background noise, and was changing perceptions of what 'gap' meant..not the beige chino's after-all, but the life altering experiential stuff. Making it "G Adventures" probably set them back a few years on that path as like learning a new skill, I and others like me need to now re-establish all I think of for GAP and try to re-align it with G. That's an uphill climb for their marketing team for years to come.

Value

I recently went through a drawn out effort to buy a car. While I had some preconceived notions about what I wanted, I tried to approach the effort with an open mind. I was interested in how well the salespeople I'd encounter could capture what I was looking for and how well they positioned their own products.

I experienced a very mixed bag of results. In general, the more experienced individual was better at talking about what mattered to me (in order one hopes to refer to that while closing the sale), while the younger people were all about price. I saw this across brands, and in fact the more established (pricier) brands were where the poorest sales efforts existed in some cases.

People don't buy cars based on price. We buy based on a series of intangible factors that range from sensibility, practicality, to sex appeal and ego stroking. One of the keys for the seller is to understand how those motivations manifest themselves in an individual buyer and work to those. It's the same way in B2B sales, though more factors influence the individual - ego, politics, career aspirations etc.

I was saddened to see the two most senior people (in terms of their titles in their organizations) I was dealing with focus almost exclusively on price. This bodes poorly for them and their businesses and is in stark contrast to what the brands they represent are about. Forgetting value is a cardinal sin in sales.

Someone in Your Life

Do you have someone in your life that you look up to ? The person you can count on, that provides clear guidance, and helps you help yourself in a manner only possible through clear understanding of who you are, combined with their own experience and wisdom. This is obviously a special person to you, one who is both confidant and mentor. It's your go-to-person for counsel and opinion.

I hope you do. The individual can act as your external conscience for moral dilema's and provide you with the upside of their life experience. It doesn't matter if their life was lived when TV was black and white (or there was just radio) as our core issues are unchanged by the movement of time. Our modern word isn't so modern that wisdom is ever out of place.

I would offer that in the past it seemed an unfair trade to me. I would offer issues, situations and opportunities to choose from, and they would (only) get to advise. I was the player that didn't want to coach. Seeds were planted though and I grew and saw the benefit of guidance and helping someone lay the foundations to harness the potential that they have within themselves. Perhaps the greatest gift given to me was this understanding of how to help make a difference for someone else. For that I am grateful beyond words and I can only hope to be as unobtrusively impact-ful to others as I've been fortunate to experience for myself.

I really hope for your sake you have such a person in your life. I do, and count myself lucky every day for them.

Those Moments in Our Lives

Sometimes we're reminded of our mortality. We're reminded that through the grace of God, or fortune, or whatever else we believe in, that our time on earth is finite, as it is for those around us that we care for. We're reminded harshly, blindsided usually, and the reminder has all the subtlety of being hit by a truck.

A brush with a difficult sickness, the death of a friend or family member, or perhaps some other awareness-quaking event in your our lives brings us back to this conclusion. We lament that we were surprised again when it happens - this feeling - that we haven't held it dear in our hearts since the last time this knowledge visited, and we pledge to do better. It's a bitter but real taste - these moments - and ones that each of us know to be absolute truths. It's the ache of loss, and the regret at missed chances to have done better. It's wondering what your last words were, and if any actions you might have taken could have changed the outcome.

And we pledge to do better - we will have more profound conversations, we will let those we love know it regularly, and we will cherish the small things in our lives that make any day worth celebrating. And we do....for a while.

Then routine, our old friend that helps the days pass unnoticeably creeps up again. The ache fades little by little and our thoughts turn away from the profound and towards the mundane.

And life goes on.

Where Were You ?

There are certain seminal moments in our civilization. Older folks speak of their whereabouts on hearing the news of JFK's assassination, that shot from a grassy knoll that seemed to mortally wound a generation's blossoming hope. I myself have a vivid recollection of Neil Armstrong's first lunar steps signalling our intent to formally approach that final frontier.

Sept 11th, 2011 was another defining moment for our generation, the aura of untouchablesness in "other cultures' issues " snapped like a twig, awakening us in North America to the reality that you can't mess with dirty problems and escape clean. It was Vietnam come home to roost.

I was on a business trip when I heard the news, having a business dinner with my boss and an important, friendly customer on the riverfront in Singapore. Within moments, all of our phones rang, from family, friends and colleagues across the world. The stories we got then were confused, muddled and reflected the early understanding of what was going on...an accident, or something sinisterly worse. We found a TV (still outside somehow) and watch as the second tower was hit and the understanding that the world was changing in front of us started to dawn. Our customer had primary US offices on Wall Street, and my own trips there and the people I knew in that location came to mind. Our dinner stopped, disbelief replacing appetite and we were riveted to the images being replayed and the unfolding carnage.

We were in Singapore for a conference to be held the 12th and 13th, and we'd planned for it for some time beforehand. While I stayed up all night watching the news unfold and talking with various colleagues around the world - evacuated buildings and fear permeating the day, I was struck by how the ground had shifted under us. I wondered if I'd have trouble getting home, and when these attacks would be over. I wondered about our business - we were in the business of global travel and I recalled all too well the empty planes and hotels during the first gulf war.

The next morning, our conference and the thousands of delegates due to attend were re-routed and the event cancelled. At the very least, it was in poor taste to continue and many had travelled from the US to be there. My boss and I headed to the airport as well, having little now to keep us in Singapore. We were unsure what the situation would be there, but it takes some time to react, and Singapore Airlines had no added security, or obvious special precautions in place. We boarded and flew as if nothing was amiss. That was surreal in light of the complete shutdown in North America.

The ten years since Sept 11th has seen our world morph and the need to be 'secure' replace many personal freedoms. The actions being taken (love them or hate them) are still reactions, which speaks to the magnitude of the event perhaps more so than the actual decisions being made today. Ten years on, it was still quite a day to remember.

Seasons

Summer is over and that saddens as its a wonderful season, perhaps the best in our repetitive cycle. However it's the cycle itself that helps rationalise why we live here. The constant changes, the varying daytime length, and wonders each quarter brings.

We can ponder the length of winter (it's no surprise there are no groundhog sightings in late August telling us how long we have to wait to don the long underwear), and the precise days that our canopy will be most vibrantly orange, yellow and red. We celebrate the new leaves erupting in their various shades of green, new life exploding around us and suffer the mixed emotions of the return to school and all that means with cooling days and colder nights.

I've spent some time in non-changing climates recently, and it's dull. Nicely dull to be sure, always warm and sunny, but dull all the same. I welcome the changes and evolving landscape we live in, watching the dynamic before our eyes.

So summer is over - bring on a vibrant and exciting autumn and its offerings of gold.

And Then There Were Three

A temporary situation ends today, one I'd quite gotten used to, false as it was.

It's a good situation, one I enjoy and makes my life better, but alas it ends today.

It's curious how we can forget to look at some things as benefits, and instead only see the downsides of them not being present.

That doesn't help make it better, but it does help rationalise how we feel about it.

I'll miss you. Come back soon.