It's finally here! Final Cut X

It's finally here!  Final Cut X .

 

Here at Windermere Design, we will be sequestering ourselves over the next few days to discover all the new bells and whistles in order to provide the same caliber of production on Final Cut X as we have delivered with the other versions of Final Cut for the past 10 years, http://www.youtube.com/user/bizimage1 to view some of our video production.  Stay tuned!

Ignite Your Talent

BY BETSY JORDAN OF ACCELERA CONSULTING. A WINDERMERE DESIGN CONSULTING PARTNER.

Greetings!

Successful people (meaning those who are living lives that are full, meaningful and abundant) have one significant trait in common. That trait is not intelligence, empathy or even drive. It is ownership of their lives.

They fully leverage all that they have, all that they are and all that they have been.

It is your responsibility to leverage all that you've got. Take ownership of yourself, your talents and the tasks in front of you. Be the best you can be; do the best you can.

Own your life and your career. That is how you succeed.

Ignite Your Talent How to Own Your Life, Career and Success We don't choose our gifts or talents but we can choose how well we steward them to help ourselves and others. The following are seven tips to own your life and career so that you will have the kind of success that creates value in your life and the lives of others. 1.    Do not let other people define who you are. Your sense of self and source of strength has to come from the inside so you do not experience a foundation shift each time public opinion of you changes. 2.    Do not let other people drain your lifeblood, energy and capacity. Take inventory of the people in your life. Keep those that support, encourage and challenge you and let go of those who suck the living daylights out of you. 3.    Do not let your past define you, but transform you. All of us have had dysfunctions of some kind in our past, whether from childhood hurts, marriage issues or personal failure. Instead of asking "why" these things happen, ask "to what end" so that you can grow from the pain and thus help others better. 4.    Take a hold of your gifts and talents without apology. There is no reason to feel bad if you think faster than others, sing better, or do complicated math problems in your head. Embrace what you bring to the world. 5.    Leverage your talents, passion and personal story into a way of adding dramatic value to others. Find the path between who you are and those who could benefit from your unique gifting. What you have to offer has a place and is needed. Find those who need you with urgency. 6.    Take responsibility for how you contribute to the well-being and self-esteem of others. What you do and say has tremendous impact on others. Be cognizant of this reality when interacting with others. Be purposeful to build others up and avoid tearing them down. 7.    Protect what you have with all that you've got. Who you are and what you have to offer is a treasure. Watch yourself if you want to give your expertise away for less than its worth because you either a) want to be liked or b) do not feel that you can ask for equitable compensation. Protect yourself from those who might want to use you or bring harm to you. Start now to fully embrace all aspects of your life - the good, the bad and the not so pretty.  By owning all that you are you put yourself in the best position to achieve what matters most to you.
Ignite your Spirit "My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." Oprah Winfrey
visit Bizimage.net

Emotional and Rational Brand Aspects

To begin the process of understanding the emotional and rational aspects of your 

organizational or personal brand.  

1. Do you know what business you are in… and what you are not in?
   
   Yes No Don't know
2. Is your target market well aware of what you have to offer and how you can add value?
   
   Yes No Don't know
3. Does your strategy reflect the unique strengths of your organization?
   
   Yes No Don't know
4. Does your strategy reflect what your organization is collectively passionate about?
   
   Yes No Don't know
5. Do your employees have clarity on what you do, for whom and why?
   
   Yes No Don't know
6. Can employees at all levels articulate how their job fits into the overall organization’s goals?
   
   Yes No Don't know
7. Do you have a set of long-term and short-term goals that are specific, clear and measureable?
   
   Yes No Don't know
8. Is a set of performance measures used to track progress against strategy?
   
   Yes No Don't know
9. When initiatives are proposed, are they determined in light of performance gaps against strategic goals?
   
   Yes No Don't know
10. Are individual performance objectives and measures tied to organizational goals?
    
    Yes No Don't know
     Betsy Jordan- Accelera Consulting,  Schedule appointment today to discuss results.   http://bizimage.net/contact.html

Branding Question?

Here's a simple test. Ask ten people on your staff what your company stands for. If you don't get the same answer, you have a brand problem.

Ask ten customers what your company stands for, if you don't get close to the same answer, you have a brand problem. Visit us at bizimage.net to creating brand power.

Brand Building

By Betsy Jordan of Accelera Consulting. A Windermere Design consulting partner.

The other day I had to buy a gift for my daughter to take to a classmate’s birthday party. I was seeking a gift that would provide the maximum value for my money. But I drove 20 minutes out of my way to go to Target, although there is a Wal-Mart on my way home.

I started to ponder the rationality of my decision. My targeted purchase was a Barbie, which I knew was a dollar more at Target. In addition to the dollar, I spent extra money on gas by going to Target. Plus, the extra 40 minutes I spent in the car was time I could have invested in doing something useful. Despite all this, I felt like I got a good deal and a positive price/value. So why did I go to Target? I went because of their brand.

What is a brand?
A brand is a promise that you make and consistently deliver to your customers. Your brand includes both the tangible and the intangible aspects of who your organization is from the perspective of your customers. It is what causes them to position you in the marketplace. Target and Wal-Mart are both in the volume-discount retail business. However, their target markets, store personalities and customer experiences are quite different. The difference is in their branding, which can clearly be seen in their advertising, store layout and design, product choices, corporate partnership choices, employee apparel and many other significant strategic decisions.

Why is branding yourself essential to long-term success?
If you don’t take charge of your brand, it will be done for you. Your organization will be positioned by your customers, which means that their impressions of you may:

1. Not be what you intended.
2. Not be relevant to them, and thus cause a barrier to their considering your products/services.
3. Be so unfavorable that any future business you want to do will be inhibited.
4. Be so undifferentiated that you will not be able to compete effectively.

For example, Target’s brand is aimed at the yuppie market, which wants good value without sacrificing style. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, goes after middle-class Americans who want low prices and approachability. But what about K-Mart? If asked, most people would have a hard time explaining just who it is K-Mart seeks to serve and how that chain is unique. For this reason, K-Mart wasn’t even on my radar screen when I was seeking to purchase that Barbie. And I am not alone. Data collected on this subject shows that K-Mart lags significantly behind Target and Wal-Mart in terms of market share and revenue.
If you do take charge of your brand, it will yield incredible results over the long term. For example, it is estimated that Coca-Cola’s brand equity is valued at over $67 billion – making Coke the number-one brand in the world. This is amazing, considering that the company doesn’t do much more than sell sugar and water in a can. Another example is the Disney Company, which is fanatical about protecting the value of its brand. And, without even knowing the numbers, it is easy to see the value of a brand when most people consistently ask for a “Kleenex” as opposed to a “tissue.” In the short-term, a well-defined brand makes it easy to deliver a positive customer experience, which means that customers experience what was promised to them or what they expected. And in the long term, it is these brand lovers, customers who are loyal to your brand, who provide the base for brand longevity and exponential results.

What are steps involved with branding?
There are four basic steps to Branding:

1. Market Research and Environmental Scan
2. Completion of the Strategic Brand Profile
3. Translation of the Strategic Brand Profile into Brand Charter Statements
4. Organizational Alignment to Brand Charter

For market research and environmental scan, you need to be able to answer the following questions:
How are we perceived by our consumers?

• What is their awareness of who we are and what we do?
• What business do they think we’re in?
• How would they characterize our corporate personality?
• Is their impression of us favorable or unfavorable? Why?
• Are they motivated to try our products and services? Why or why not?
• If they have tried our products and services, how motivated are they to repeat their usage and recommend our products and services to others?
• If we came up with a new product or service, would they be interested in working with our organization again? Why or why not?

What do we know our about our consumers and the marketplace?

• How would we describe our consumers? (This includes demographics, income level, education, etc.)
• What are the expectations of our consumers? What is important to them?
• How do we see our consumers changing and evolving over the next 10 years?
• What choices do our consumers have that are in competition with our products and services?
• What do we have that appeals to our consumers? What do others have that appeals to our consumers?
• What are the trends in our industry that we need to be aware of? Which trends do we want to lead, be the middle of or lag behind?

Strategic Brand Profile
The table below is a strategic brand profile. When each box is filled out, the emotional and rational aspects of a brand are captured.

Translating the Strategic Brand Profile into a Brand Charter
Once decisions have been made on the Strategy Brand Profile, the concepts can be captured into a brand charter. There are four separate statements that comprise a brand charter:

• Vision Statement: This statement describes the ongoing state that the organization ideally wants to achieve.

• Essence Statement: This statement is written from the perspective of the customer/client and reflects how the organization wants its customers to feel when they are experiencing products/services.

• Positioning Statement: This statement is primarily used by individuals who create advertisement and printed collateral, and focuses on three things:
  • Especially for Brand Lovers
  • Our organization, product/service is the Frame of Reference
  • That Product Difference

• Mission Statement: This statement clearly gives marching orders to the organization on what it needs to do, for whom and to what end, in order to deliver on the Vision Statement.

Organizational Alignment to the Brand Charter
Once the main strategic decisions have been made and articulated in the brand charter, the rest of the organization should be brought into alignment to support the strategy. Again, a brand is a promise that is made and consistently delivered. More often than not, this is where branding efforts fall apart. Promises are made, but they are made inconsistently. And, worse, promises are made but aren’t delivered on.
In terms of aligning external messages that are delivered to customers, review the following to ensure alignment:

• Website
• Products
• Services
• Atmosphere
• Printed materials
• Other customers
• Packaging
• Consumer messages in advertising

Review the following categories in terms of aligning your internal organization to support delivery of brand promises:

• Organizational structure Is work divided up in such a way that it supports strategic intents?
• Leadership Do your leaders understand and embody the brand?
• Processes Do processes support delivery of brand promises?
• Recruiting and Hiring Are the right people sought after and hired?
• Training Are employees trained on how to deliver brand promises?
• Compensation and Rewards Do these systems reinforce behaviors that support brand delivery?

The Bottom Line
During tough economic times, don’t cut your organization’s efforts to build an effective brand. You should never ignore your brand when you are “tightening your belt,” as tempting as it may be. Rather, that is the time to focus your resources on improving the touch-points between your organization and its customers.
You need to do more than make promises; you need to ensure that you deliver on them. You also need to do what it takes to ensure that your brand and strategic intentions are decision-making filters for employees at every level in your organization. Brands are defined by actions, not just words. What your organization does in bull and bear markets must reflect your brand identity in order to ensure long-term success.
Do you need to take greater charge or your brand?  Give us a call at 407.235.8250 for a free consultation. 

How the Brain Processes Information

Research has shown us that the brain processes information using two channels—visual and auditory.

When information is presented using both channels, the brain can accommodate more new information. By taking advantage of this multimodal processing capability and technology-based tools, we can dramatically enhance audience comprehension and recall through multimedia.

We are at the beginning of a revolution in neuroscience, and yet we know more about how the brain processes information than ever before.

How we process information 

Our ability to process information is a multi-step process that involves the 

perception, attention, selection, organization and integration of information 

(Sweller, 2003).  At the center of this process is long term memory.  As the 

name implies, our long term memory stores our accumulated knowledge.  Our 

accumulated knowledge is organized into ―chunks‖ of information in what are 

known as schema.  Schemas allow us to organize information in meaningful 

ways and help us integrate and organize new information (Chi, Glaser, and Rees, 

1982).  In short, our long term memory is where what we know is stored and 

where we integrate new information.  If information does not find its way into 

long term memory, it is lost.  Learning can be thought of as change in our long 

term memory. 

The limitations of working memory 

Before information can be integrated into long term memory it must be received 

and processed by our working memory.  Working memory is very limited; it 

can only handle small amounts of information before it has to be integrated into 

our long term memory or lost.  In his landmark article on this subject, George 

Miller (1956) suggested that we can only process about seven pieces of 

information at one time.  And, we must do so quickly, as working memory can 

only keep information for about 20 seconds.   

Multiple channels for information processing 

Researchers now believe that there are multiple channels in working memory.  

Baddeley (1992) proposes an auditory and a visual channel. The auditory 

channel handles information that is heard, while the visual channel processes

information that is seen.  Text seems to have unique processing requirements, 

with words initially captured by the visual channel and then converted to sounds 

in the auditory channel (Mayer, 2005)

Research suggests that the visual channel handles less information than the auditory channel (Miler, 2005).  However, when information is presented using both the visual and auditory channels, working 

memory can handle more information overall.  Using multiple channels can increase the amount of 

information that the brain can process (Sweller, 2005).  But, there is still the risk of cognitive 

overload.   Too much information delivered in an ineffective manner can interfere with the brain’s ability to successfully integrate information into long term memory.   visit bizimage.net

Logical Vs. Intuitive Processing

The left brain processes in a linear, sequential, logical manner. When you process on the left side, you use information piece by piece to solve a math problem or work out a science experiment. When you read and listen, you look for the pieces so that you can draw logical conclusions. If you process primarily on the right side of the brain, you use intuition. You may know the right answer to a math problem but not be sure how you got it. You may have to start with the answer and work backwards. On a quiz, you have a gut feeling as to which answers are correct, and you are usually right. In writing, it is the left brain that pays attention to mechanics such as spelling, agreement, and punctuation. But the right side pays attention to coherence and meaning; that is, your right brain tells you it "feels" right.  Visit bizimage.net