Tag: Nike

Brand America

American Apparel ‘s tag line is “sweatshop free”. Nike‘s Just Do It (i.e. Just Buy It).

Apple‘s – Think Different.

Meanwhile, Haier and Huawei are trying to copy Hundai and Kia who tried to copy Honda and Toyota who had tried to copy VW and Mercedes. Brand building in and outside of America.

What would John Kerry ‘s “elevator speech” be?

That America is exceptional?

America has always reinvented itself?

Or it has lucked out, despite its short history (compared to other nations). Ironically, its short memory has been its strength – less dogma and insistence on a set way, more adapting and opened to adopting best practices (sort of leap-frogging its political history).

We have heard so much about brain drain (to America, it’s brain-gain).

Perhaps Brand America pays well, encourages mistakes and risk-taking.

Brand America is quite tolerant even forgiving (entrepreneur’s oxygen).

Brand America has always been youthful (Rock and Roll) and sporty (Super Bowl).

Brand America might have its British roots, but then Britain had to invade it again (the British Invasion e.g. the Beatles).

Brand America exports Hollywood and imports not Bollywood.

Brand America exports clean toilets (American Standard) and fast food.

Brand America leverages low-interest rates and cheap labor.

People line up to get in, many stay on, but some have left because of the recession.

Brand America advocates racial and gender equality, champions environmental and civil rights.

Brand America is indeed exceptional in the way it treats its weakest link – from pets to children – from the handicapped to the retired.

When values are at odd, it’s where Brand America shines albeit with vigorous debates and violent disagreement.

Brand America has enduring values that need constant refresh.

It is continuously transformed and transfigured: two World Wars , two Recessions and two Towers. Brand America’s strength lies in its people.

Free thinking and swift action. Some residue from Frontier’s Days won’t hurt. Shoot from the hip. You add to this train of thought. Because you are as much a part of the brand as I. Brand America’s tag line: reinventing you (from Eisenhower to Einstein), sweatshop free, but not free of sweat.

Reading People

I was approached by a guy wearing an FBI cap, asking me to buy lottery tickets.

It’s hot in Vietnam this time of the year. Almost everyone wears some sorts of caps with USA on them,  helmets with the Nike vectors or a hybrid version: helmets shaped like caps.

From top to toe, we send out signals and messages. Call it Non-Verbal language.

2/3 of our communication are not verbal (in Without You, there is a line “you always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows, yes it shows”).

Yet few of us were schooled, trained or able to detect these hidden codes: I am cool. I don’t give a damn. I am somebody. I am everybody. I am nobody. Try me…..

Conversely, people receive unintended messages we did not know we  send.

I’ve got money. I don’ t respect you enough (clothing mismatched). I am carefree. I am careful. Don’t mess with me (tatoo and black T’s).

In the States, cars make statements. Here, it’s the scooters.

A guitar as backpack (musician) a rolled-up mat (yoga) a cone hat (urban migrant) a kid with balloon (mom has a night out and spends guilt money).

Every stripe and strand co-exist and negotiate limited space.

The upper crust has already left town to exclusive and elite resorts, leaving behind the “mass who live in quiet desperation” in the tourist district, where people lean against fake trees and work up a fake smile for photo ops.

If you stood and watched people, you are not sure between background and foreground, which one is more on display.

Wait until 4-G is here.

Then we will have completed our evolutionary cycle (self-expression with a cost).

When those sport cars came out, they were intended to say: I own this toy, reserved for me and my girlfriend (parents and entourage are not welcome).

So will it be with the I’s family of products (unless you share the listening device  with one significant other). The I-pod Shuffle was meant for one, jogger preferably.

Not the boombox that blasts out Christmas music for the whole neighborhood.

Yes, in our technological society, the clear message (which happens to be the medium, according to McLuhan) is that, I finally am. Arrived. Leave me alone. Leave your old world behind (communal and village-bound). I am OK, you are OK or not, it’s irrelevant. When the playing field is leveled (by us duck-sitting as advertising headcounts), they will upgrade to some other games which will require premium fees.

So we celebrate the upcoming New Year, with ” a will to try” so as not to be left out or behind.

My New Year resolution is to read people better, however subtle the intended messages might be. Often times, it’s mixed message. After all, the world is our non-verbal bookstore. Just  hope I don’t run into a real FBI agent, undercover as a lottery-ticket pusher.

People, Problems and Politics

In that order.

You just need to navigate the permutation and potential.

Great things are accomplished by and through people.

Yet at the same time, it’s people who drive us crazy.

When a big group with more EGO than ECO, we have faction and division.

Cliques and classes.

In India, an “untouchable” family finally had it. Their daughter got raped by the village powerful. And it did not stop there. They even bragged about it. Words got around back to the father.  Shamed and humiliated, the mother took it to court. Twice the shame, in hope of one right.

Now, that’s people, problems and politics.

At work, we don’t have such an extreme (not at the magnitude of Penn State).

But part of the process is to let leadership rise. People can be taught to collaborate by example.

The power of someone in the organization acting for the common good (without any one watching, or claiming credits).

At some point in our lives, we learn to trust ourselves. That no matter how bad, we only have one life to live, sharing it with the people not of our own choosing (family and co-workers – especially during the Recession). Hence, make the best of it.

Bigger picture. One Earth . One ozone layer above and one oil resource underneath. Be “earthful” i.e. mindful of late-stage Earth. We have been on steroid. We have been “Lances”. Now is the time to take stocks. Get rid of the water bottles. Start using hand-wash towels. String out a clothes line (solar energy instead of machine dryer). Maybe even hand wash our sneakers.

Come one. Park the car at the other end of the parking lot and start walking to the gym.

Brain storm on the refrigerator’s door to see how many ways our families can save by conservation (I saw a kid pick up soda cans tonight, with parental participation. Outta  girl!).

Of all the holidays, Halloween is such a waste (costume worn once).

Fourth of July as well. We keep shooting up and burning our hard-earned money for a politics we don’t even support (I know this is harsh and unsubstantiated. But look, the way the country is heading, we might as well be partitioned in two).

People, problems and politics. Can’t do with them, can’t do without them. Before 1984 (Personal Computer), we had spent most of our time talking and working with people. After 1984, we sit in front of the screen (all sizes), and interact with a machine. “It says here, you are not in the system” (what system? the clerk did not even input a ticket I have tried three times to pay for).

Not sure we have sacrificed people skills for computer skills. But society hasn’t progressed for the better as a result of faster data processing. We still have homeless people (perhaps more with high foreclosure rates), our educational standing has slipped, and we are not even up there in Competitive and Happy Index as a Super Power should. Go figure. Google it for yourself.

The Routine

Instinctively, we follow the path of least resistance (park in the shade, grab the nearest item on the shelves…).

Marketers make it their mission to study this, the same way scientists experiment with reflexive rats in the lab.. Nike even filmed the Standford team, trained barefooted, to see the landing and movement of their feet.

Creatures of habits. Social animal.

Maximum connections: 120, to stay meaningful.

Yet, we are now networked at hockey-stick growth chart.  Majority of the world, including what used to be called the Third World, got phones. Can you hear me now!

Mobile payment, mobile banking, mobile TV.

Nomad lifestyle all over again. I blogged about Point A to B.

Louis L’Amour said it best ” the problem with mankind is that we can’t stay put in one place”.

Train and now plane hobos. Air travel used to carry with it social badges: prestige and class (think Pan Am).

The same with the automobile when it first came out. Then the assembly line (yesterdays’ Foxconn) and high-paid manufacturing jobs at Ford, changed all that.

Everything is new, yet nothing is new.

The rich have to (and have always) reinvent the game, find new playground and fence it off to stay exclusive (can you imagine online education for the mass, live streaming from the Ivory Tower of Ivy League schools). It is all happening.

MIT, then Standford. My fair lady, for the world. The rain in Spain doesn’t fall mainly on the plain.

It is common grace (rain on the field of the good and the evil).

Brazil is hosting the next Olympic. Perhaps it is fitting and symbolic that after England, we shift focus to BRIC, with B for Brazil.

Something about growing ethanol down there. About reinventing a country, about female leadership in a vibrant and colourful nation.

Let’s hope that spirit and energy rub off on us, stodgy and austere nations.

I believe our best days have yet been behind us.

We just need to look inward, take an honest inventory and reinvent ourselves. Focus on the essentials and task ourselves with the right things. Ignore the critics. They are always there, taking shots at doers. And above all, believe. We have pulled this off before. Can and will do it again. It’s our good routine. It’s us, intrinsically and uncompromisingly, at our best. As Chris Gardner puts it, “only us can give ourselves legitimacy”.  Routine, but earned routine, not forced.

Nature as reminder

Scientists just found out that Earth is much older than previously thought. It certainly has a way to maintain itself.  Remember Tsunami and Fukushima? or the Louisiana oil spill and Katrina? At the time, we thought we couldn’t bear the grunt, but one by one, they are now behind us.

Same thing with this summer ‘s drought and consumer sentiment dip.

Yet, it is known that many companies are hoarding cash e.g. Apple .

In NYC, Chinese got in line to buy a few phones, just to hand-carry them back to Main Land.

Those phones were made by FoxConn, Taiwanese who contracted out to Main Land to begin with.

When users need tech support or help from customer service, the calls got routed to India or Philippines. To be cool and hip, one buys clothes that go with the phone.

Again, those clothes are now Made in Vietnam.

There are signs every where to remind us of a wider world out there unlike the man who ” while life goes on around him everywhere he’s playing solitaire” courtesy the Carpenter’s Solitaire.

When we say our bedtime prayer, people in the Far East are off to action. It’s like the story of a hare and a turtle. In a race.

When do we turn around to learn from others, from nature and its permanence?

The best gift we can offer the world and others is being ourselves. By being authentic, we allow them to be themselves as well. Break the ice. Break the silence. Break the barriers.

We are not marketers who try to segment our customer base.

We are people who need people (who make our I phones and our Nike shoes).

Remember, tonight, when we go to sleep, others in the Far East are getting up to punch in, at factories and farms (server) to maintain our data base or make our footwear. Be mindful and thankful that nature and evolution are both working in our favors. BTW, they are talking about I-phone 5 already. It’s a dry summer here, but it rains elsewhere in the world. The machine is off here, but they are humming 24/7 around the world. It’s a different world now but nature stands to bear witness to those changes, as always.

Monday-morning quarterbacking

We can’t change history, but we can sure learn from it.

Just view training film, freezeframing it, and nail down some take-aways.

What did we do wrong? why? what did we fail to do? Where?

Avoid assigning blame.

Move forward.

America is all about the future.

Sarah who?

Sandusky who?

Just do it (BTW, Nike removed JoePa’s name off list).

Brand recovery. Monday-morning quarterbacking.

Some companies insist on hiring people who have failed.

It costs them less to have workers who learned hard lessons on someone else’s watch.

Second chances.

Know what not to do, or dare not repeat the same mistake.

As human, we adapt well. Survival of the fittest.

It’s by no chance that our life expectancy has risen from 49 to mid-70. Go oatmeal go.

For Joe Paterno, it was 85. A lot of Monday mornings during his tenure.

It ended just short of a Greek tragedy.

Now we know. In hindsight. On Monday morning. We who are smart and stand on moral high ground.

Do we know what it’s like to be on that field, in those shoes, during the heat of the game?

Right there! Freeze frame it. you see? What should we have done. Best thing is not to have it happen the second time around, not in this life time.

P.S. From the President’s desk comes this announcement on Monday AM

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Announcement-from-Penn-State-College-3877559.S.135017698?view=&gid=3877559&type=member&item=135017698&trk=NUS_DISC_Q-ttle

tale of a survivor

A Canadian lady, back from visiting her family in India, was aboard the flight to Detroit on Christmas day.http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/OnlineFullStory.aspx?filename=p122649A&newsitemid=27268234&languageid=1

She recalled vivid details of near-miss explosion, the terror and the bravery of passengers and crews.

We cannot control some events, but we can control our reaction (10/90 rule).

As far as stats , the chance for us to get hit by a car is much higher (1/80) vs (1/800,000 by a terrorist) in our life time.

But, for those of us on business frequent flying list, bump that up a bit.

These past few years, American stay put more, move less. Many just want to stay in their house, without it being foreclosed.

We are dealing with an atmosphere of insecurity more than fear. Insecurity makes us loose sleep, fear helps us prepared.

The perpetrator was known as son of a banker, sent to first-rate school in England (I had some Nigerian graduate school classmates whose intellectual mind I admired).  In contrast, Prince William, born of royalty, decided to pursue and focus on a S & R military career. One intends to destroy and take people with him, the other, saves lives.

Same age group, different sets of orientation.

What I detest are people who expound a certain view, and urge the restless and radical to go out and “just do it”.

N American kids would take that as a “call of the mall” and go out to buy a pair of Nike.

These days I can’t avoid hearing about the “marketing” damage Tiger’s downfall wrought.

This holiday could have been much gloomier but thank God, it’s behind us.

Four young men: the Prince who slept a homeless night in the street of London, a banker’s son who should have traveled with his underwear inside out (like Madonna), Tiger who no longer acts his name, and the Dutch producer enjoys his well-deserving sunshine in Miami after a brief stop in Detroit.

Come on boys! Let’s act like men. Had it still been “hunter and gatherer society”, we would have marched you deep into the trail

and had you haul wild animals back for supper. Life has been hard, digital or analog, even without fanatics.

The Canadian lady said she threw up when finally safe inside the passenger lounge.  Asked if she would fly again, the answer was , perhaps not American. We need some brand reinvigorating here.