Recently, there’s been a handful of movies making their debut in 3-D. Earlier today I took my two kids to go see G-Force (a movie about four hamsters and a mole who are secret agents out to stop the world from being, ironically,  exterminated. Cute, right?). Featured previews included Alice in Wonderland (can you say “hole-nutha-level?”), Toy Story 3 (also in 3D) and an upcoming remake of Scrooge (HNL!).

Just watching these trailers simply blew me away and got me so excited for what was to come - they took me to a hole-nutha-level! Now, my expectation for what’s cool in movies just went up about 10 notches (on a scale of 1-10). No longer are animated movies simply enough in 2D - now I EXPECT the full experience of things popping out in front of us, satisfying my sense of sight, sound and (almost) touch.

Now you’re probably not going to rush out and make a 3D movie, but you can raise the expectations of your fans, friends and brand-loyalists by taking your brand to an HNL. How can you reach HNL status?

You’ll need three things:

1. Creativity, 2. Technology, 3.Passion

1. Creativity - Creativity is what gets people excited - it’s a new (or re-interpreted) idea. It’s Tim Burton’s remake of Alice and Wonderland. It’s Radiohead’s In Rainbows. It’s Obama’s use of technology in his political campaign. It’s Cake Batter at Coldstone Creamery. New. Creative. Fresh. You get the picture. You NEED creativity to EXCEED expectations because the expectations have already been set - your brand must raise the bar! You can only do this by doing something new or different (can you say Apple?).

2. Technology: Social media. Free social media like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are reaching the user on a personal level and have gained access to the lifeblood of just about every human being on the planet (as far as technology goes): their cell phones! Now (as a social media expert friend of mine recently said) businesses control the conversation and decide when they would like to communicate up-to-the-minute information that a user simply can’t (or won’t) get by just visiting your brand’s website when they get around to it.

If you can get people excited enough about you to follow you (and stay your follower!) then you can begin to reach people on a HNL.

3. Passion - You can’t do much without passion. Your creative branding efforts will be exceedingly painful, dull and eventually, you’ll just shrivel up and die (we don’t want that). You must find whatever it is that sparked the passion for what you do, who you do it for, etc. again, or find a new reason to be passionate about it. Once you’ve got passion, baby, there’s no stopping you!

So, are you ready to take your brand to a Hole-Nutha-Level? BTW - you’re probably asking, why HOLE instead of Whole? Because somewhere out there, there’s a Hole with an idea in it waiting for you to grab it, my friend! Go get it - and bring along technology and passion, too. They’ll help it grow.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.