Friday, May 23, 2008
Corporate Identity Featured by HP/Logoworks
I got a call Wednesday morning from a gal at HP. She asked, "Would you be interested in being in a video highlighting the logo that you did with Logoworks today?"
Apparently, someone dropped out of the schedule, the film crew was in town, and the marketing department had scanned hundreds of logos and selected The Marteney Group as a top prospect to show off the work they have done. It sounded like a cool opportunity. My day was surprisingly open, so I said "yes."
My conference room was quickly transformed into a working studio, with the film crew choosing an interesting angle and using a colored light behind the blinds that were behind me. The VP of Marketing asked me questions about my experience (I have used Logoworks three separate times, for logo/corporate identity and web site development). The crew filmed my stationery, business cards, mugs, and pens up close. I think they'll be capturing screen shots from my web site too.
At some point, I'll get a DVD with the video that HP will be sharing with Fortune 500 company CEOs and marketing executives.
It's an interesting coincidence, as I've been thinking about offering my branding and positioning workshops again, after not marketing them for years. Last fall, I integrated my branding and positioning workshop with leadership coaching for Novitaz, a high tech company.
The CEO, Suni Munshani, for whom I once worked and who is now a friend, sent me a long testimonial letter after the workshop, which included the following comments:
"I want to thank you for your incredible contributions to Novitaz and the team, but also to acknowledge we may not have survived Novitaz if we had not done the off-site with you in Salt Lake City."
"We also came away with clarity on our brand, and we are very clear on the changes we need to make to our messaging. This has created a ton of work for us, but it is fun work, and we are excited to get it done. It will identify us with who we really are and what we declare we will be."
The HP video will be fun to show at the beginning of branding workshops, opening up a discussion on how clarifying vision, mission, essence, and positioning of a brand, as well as defining the core customer value proposition leads to a brand (logo/visual identity) that captures the essence of your offering.
Drop a line if you have questions about how branding can be applied at the personal level!
Apparently, someone dropped out of the schedule, the film crew was in town, and the marketing department had scanned hundreds of logos and selected The Marteney Group as a top prospect to show off the work they have done. It sounded like a cool opportunity. My day was surprisingly open, so I said "yes."
My conference room was quickly transformed into a working studio, with the film crew choosing an interesting angle and using a colored light behind the blinds that were behind me. The VP of Marketing asked me questions about my experience (I have used Logoworks three separate times, for logo/corporate identity and web site development). The crew filmed my stationery, business cards, mugs, and pens up close. I think they'll be capturing screen shots from my web site too.
At some point, I'll get a DVD with the video that HP will be sharing with Fortune 500 company CEOs and marketing executives.
It's an interesting coincidence, as I've been thinking about offering my branding and positioning workshops again, after not marketing them for years. Last fall, I integrated my branding and positioning workshop with leadership coaching for Novitaz, a high tech company.
The CEO, Suni Munshani, for whom I once worked and who is now a friend, sent me a long testimonial letter after the workshop, which included the following comments:
"I want to thank you for your incredible contributions to Novitaz and the team, but also to acknowledge we may not have survived Novitaz if we had not done the off-site with you in Salt Lake City."
"We also came away with clarity on our brand, and we are very clear on the changes we need to make to our messaging. This has created a ton of work for us, but it is fun work, and we are excited to get it done. It will identify us with who we really are and what we declare we will be."
The HP video will be fun to show at the beginning of branding workshops, opening up a discussion on how clarifying vision, mission, essence, and positioning of a brand, as well as defining the core customer value proposition leads to a brand (logo/visual identity) that captures the essence of your offering.
Drop a line if you have questions about how branding can be applied at the personal level!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Book Study Group & Reflections on Presence
I was just playing back a recording of a book study group I'm participating in this quarter. Alas, I missed the first call.
It's always interesting to hear a variety of check-ins, how people describe themselves, a surprising number with rising inflections at the end of their factual statements. That peculiar rise in inflection at the end of a statement sounds hesitant, not fully grounded in one's own experience.
What is it about unfamiliar group settings that makes us sound uncertain about basic things, like what we most care about?!
My client work today was with very different men, yet had interesting parallels to my book study group call. Each client dropped into amazing moments of presence, and then, as quickly, each popped back out and felt distant, abstract, although still continuing to talk.
The difference was in how deeply each man experienced himself as he talked. It's the same for all of us, of course. It can be subtle, we can talk without that disturbing uptick in our voices, but still not be fully embodied in our own experience (the old "talking heads" syndrome).
As I listened to the rest of the recorded call tonight, I tried to imagine each person, how they were holding their bodies, what their mood was, whether they were distracted by a computer screen with email popping up, however silently, etc.
The call wasn't live. I couldn't participate in the conversation. I didn't love the book. So I found myself far more intrigued by the quality of each person's recorded presence than the content being covered.
I'm also left with a curiosity about how I come across when recorded, as part of a visually anonymous group. Hmmm.
It's always interesting to hear a variety of check-ins, how people describe themselves, a surprising number with rising inflections at the end of their factual statements. That peculiar rise in inflection at the end of a statement sounds hesitant, not fully grounded in one's own experience.
What is it about unfamiliar group settings that makes us sound uncertain about basic things, like what we most care about?!
My client work today was with very different men, yet had interesting parallels to my book study group call. Each client dropped into amazing moments of presence, and then, as quickly, each popped back out and felt distant, abstract, although still continuing to talk.
The difference was in how deeply each man experienced himself as he talked. It's the same for all of us, of course. It can be subtle, we can talk without that disturbing uptick in our voices, but still not be fully embodied in our own experience (the old "talking heads" syndrome).
As I listened to the rest of the recorded call tonight, I tried to imagine each person, how they were holding their bodies, what their mood was, whether they were distracted by a computer screen with email popping up, however silently, etc.
The call wasn't live. I couldn't participate in the conversation. I didn't love the book. So I found myself far more intrigued by the quality of each person's recorded presence than the content being covered.
I'm also left with a curiosity about how I come across when recorded, as part of a visually anonymous group. Hmmm.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Hiatus in Writing - Update on UAE Project
So I've been to the United Arab Emirates and back since I last wrote. I survived the roundabouts in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Al Ain (I got an "are you okay" note from my brother after a 200-car pile-up happened between Dubai and Abu Dhabi on March ).
At the Al Ain Hilton and at the Al Shaheen camp outside of Al Ain, I enjoyed the comraderie of colleagues from around the world -- Jordan, South Africa, Scotland, England, Australia, and Sudan. We spent our first week shadowing the male facilitators at an all-male leadership assessment camp (where participants from the highest levels of government resided at the camp and participated in experiential or action learning assignments designed to test their leadership skills).
To put the work in context, the UAE's visionary president, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed mandated a comprehensive leadership development program for over 700 of the UAE's civil service leaders to achieve his goal of becoming one of the top 5 most respected and effective governments in the world by the year 2012. To do this, the Sheikh's policy agenda emphasizes:
"(P)rogrammes to develop an open economy, based on sustainable knowledge, that can compete internationally and with distinction, providing the best services in education, health and developed infrastructure within a legislative environment distinguished by efficiency and transparency."
Our job as the first group of female facilitators was to learn almost a dozen games (rules, penalties, equipment, etc.), the leadership assessment model (12 competencies against which each candidate would be assessed), the literal lay of the land (where each game was located across a broad expanse of red-gold sand dunes), and the report-writing process (how to integrate live observations with data from each candidate's psychometric tests). Simple, eh?
Well, there was a catch. After running with many men's camps since the fall of 2007, the camp had to instantly turn into an all-female camp -- so that 40 female leaders could fully participate in the camp's activities and without wearing their abayas, the long flowing black robe that Emerati women wear over their clothes in public.
This meant that the logistics manager had to disappear (he was responsible for the walkie talkies, the water trucks that replenished the camp, the pick-up truck that transports hypertensive or otherwise medically-sensitive participants to the dunes, and so forth).
The IT manager also had to disappear and operate remotely from the Hilton. Even the male chef had to vacate camp for the week and arrange to have food sent in.
Female Filipino security guards were stationed as sentries at the camp's gate, ensuring no strangers and certainly no men had access to the camp, which although rather remote was nevertheless secured by several guards at all times.
The prank nature played on me was delivering a dreadful bug from one of my newest friends, Mira El Tal, a very cool and bright half-American/half-Jordanian woman from Dubai. Incidentally, in the UAE, antibiotics are passed out like candy at pharmacies, and with the ever-changing constellation of ex-patriates coming and going from all parts of the world, new superbugs were brewing all the time. Everyone seemed to have stories of getting a kind of crud when they first came to the UAE. And I thought I had a rock solid immune system.
Sigh. I lost my voice the day before the women's camp was to begin. Bad timing to say the least. A bus load of Emerati women arrived on that hot Sunday of March 16th, and my voice croaked and I coughed (and I worried about making a wretched first impression). I'll never forget one of the younger candidates, who worked in an Organizational Development role, later winking at me and saying that I sounded "sexy."
It's funny thinking back to my fist week in the UAE, seeing women in their abayas on the street, where they looked so unavailable. The Emerati women who lead important parts of the UAE's government services were anything but shy or unavailable.
Most spoke impeccable English and forgave us readily for our few words of Arabic. And, to a woman, they were determined to throw themselves into the challenges of the week wholeheartedly, to take on the performance of over 400 men who preceded them at the camp.
We had our amusing little challenges during the week, but all worked out without any Murphy's Law moments. Well, maybe the pickup truck getting stuck in the sand was one of those moments, but facilitators, Mary Lou Rushforth and L'Re Vanrooyen, and some camp staff freed the truck from the sand and let out the air in the tires to proper sand dune driving levels, and the situation never made it all the way to red alert (read: call the guys in). Well done, ladies!
Throughout the week, in which the temperature had climbed and the wind had become ever more still, the Emerati candidates were in good spirits, saying things like, "When will we ever have another opportunity quite like this? This is an historic experience for us." Indeed, it was the first time many of them had ever met, with women from family services on teams with women from architecture and engineering services divisions. It was certainly the first time many had ever roughed it or shared a room with several strangers in a trailer, far from custoary levels of service these women enjoy.
At the end of the week, I remember finding myself walking alongside a woman with a particularly wonderful profile and commanding presence. I asked what part of the Government she was from. She said, "Presidential Affairs." I said, "Oh, you're involved in the world of politics!" She smiled in a engaging way and said, "Yes, I tell these women that 'I am the Government.'" I liked her and wished we could have spent more time talking, but the week was ending, and the women were boarding the bus headed back to Abu Dhabi.
We waved at them and debriefed and, like that, it was all over. One last shower back at the Hilton and we could turn in our uniforms and chill out for the afternoon with nary a report to be written before dinner. It was a whirlwind adventure, one that I will never forget, and one that also marked an early spring after a long (and hard) winter for me!
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