The great thing here is that because of the interaction and relationships they build with their employees, they gain valuable insight into their companies and from this comes some really profound change. It’s inspiring and it’s such a positive show.

By creating better, stronger relationships with their employees, and connecting with them as human beings, not merely worker drones, they will build stronger brands. When you have people working with you, and doing business with you that feel valued and respected, they will usually become catalysts for your brand.

So how about you? Are you building stronger relationships with your employees, with vendors, with customers…better yet…with PEOPLE? With all of the money spent on advertising, marketing, public relations, social media, etc. – sometimes all it takes is just reaching out and building a relationship.

I’m bummed about no camping, too, although I’ve never camped, but I’d be willing to open up my pad for folks coming in from out of town looking for a place to crash. Seriously.

Branding for a music festival is great, because you’ve got so much creative freedom, and I get to draw stuff – like the logo! It’s all done by hand, with the exception of the annual logotype. We do a lot of our work here in an organic way, going back to the roots of drawing by hand, which is something that a lot of designers have lost, sadly. One other thing that makes branding for a festival a bit different is that the logo itself kind of becomes the art for the poster and lots of different applications for branding, from advertising, the program, t-shirts, etc. Hopefully it’s well received!

The website will be ready to  rock next week and I can’t wait to launch. It’s definitely been one of the most fun projects for Birthmark to-date and we’re definitely proud to be a part of the festival again this year. Let’s make lemonade people!

Small business owners, if this even slightly resembles what your business cards look like – you’re probably scaring people. Just like a good business card design can make a great impression right off the bat, the opposite is also true. This guy came to my door today claiming he sells Direct TV. He gave me a business card and a photocopied flier as well. I actually seriously considered calling the cops on the guy. I don’t know for sure whether this guy is legit or not, but just by looking at his card, I’m thinking probably not.

There’s not even the slightest chance I would consider calling this guy. Personally, he made a decent impression. He was polite and dressed business casual. Regardless of what he looks like, or what kind of personality he may have had, I don’t believe this guy is legit – and even if he was, from the looks of this card, his service or product is probably REALLY bad. Please, please, small business owners, don’t go out like this guy and scare people out of doing business with you. I beg you!

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.

Once we got in, we were handed a program that was really informative and laid out all the events, times and locations in an easy-to-find format. The first thing we did was check out the helicopter that Arizona Search and Rescue had displayed. They’re not funded by the state and they volunteer their time and money to do their jobs so they were there to raise a few bucks. They had some sherrif Joe boxers for sale and if you bought some merchandise, you could get your photo taken in the helli. I got a pair of pink Sherrif Joe boxers (for the wife!) and we got a few snapshots – they’re supposed to email them to me soon and I’ll post them here.

The kids and I bought some tickets and went on a few rides. Their favorite was the bean bag slide. I loved seeing their smiling faces as they slid down the rainbow colored slides at lightning speed on potato sacks – that was awesome. Next, we got a few snacks and bought a cup for $4 that was refillable for $2 for soda, which I thought was a pretty cool thing, considering most drinks are like $4 a pop. We then saw a really funny street act, where the guy was juggling flames, cups, all kinds of stuff, while telling jokes. He even had a cool poem that he recited about living life to the fullest every day, while juggling a machetti, a ham and a flaming torch.

We then went to see a pretty entertaining stunt show (I later found out that earlier that day, a guy was critically injured while practicing for the show). The main event was the ostrich race. We got there right at 2:00pm and it was packed. We could barely find a spot where we could see the races. I was really excited to see the race becaue I’ve never seen an ostrich race before. Here’s where things got interesting…

…The MC was announcing all of the jockeys participating. He said that the jockeys could weigh no more than 150 lbs. and then he gave each jockey a quick interview that we could all hear. One of the jockeys was a woman who said that “she definitely weighed under 150 lbs.” but would give no more detail than that, and rightly so! So a few minutes later they were off. Even though we were standing towards the back of the really large crowd, I could still see the main drag all the way up to the turn, and the ostriches took off way faster than I had anticipated. They were really tall and you could see the top half of their bodies, and their long necks and heads – they bolted down the drag.

Then, the rider I was watching looked like she was loosing her grip going down the main drag. She seemed to lean more and more to the left until she finally fell off! She tripped the ostrich and the giant bird fell right on top of the poor girl. Everything just stopped. At first, I think most people probably thought to just shrug it off, but when the girl lay there motionless, you knew something was seriously wrong. At that point, you knew that this was more than just a little accident.

5 or 6 people ran out to her, and then you could hear the shouting. The girl looked like she was convulsing, as her legs were shaking what looked like uncontrollabley. Then you heard the MC start yelling for an EMT. At that point, I grabbed my kids and we decided we’d had enough for one day. While we left, we said a quick prayer for the girl together and hoped she’d be okay. Man, what a day! I’ve been doing google searches trying to find out any news on the poor girl, but haven’t come up with anything. If you’re reading this and you know what’s happened to her, please drop a comment!

I think I’ll go back next year to see the ostrich races. They do have a lot of things going on and it’s a good event for families that won’t break the bank.

I recently went into Starbucks – now I don’t go there all that often anymore (Dunkin’ Doughnuts stole my heart), but I recently ran out of coffee here at home and needed to run somewhere close by to get my mornin’ fix. The people in the Starbucks were friendly, funny and just plain cool. I had sort of written off Starbucks because of my budget, but I found myself saying I’d definitely come back because I had a good experience with the people that worked in the shop.

I can’t say this enough – your brand is not just how you project yourself to the world, it’s how the world see’s you as well. Give your customers a great brand experience and hire good people that know how to work well with your clients or customers – they will be worth their weight in gold.

To any designers out there reading this, if you’re helping your clients to build their brand, encourage them to not only focus on the outward appearance, but the inward motivations of building genuine and sincere connections with the people they work with. Good service is good branding.

When making a video for social media, you need not have a huge budget – it’s the idea and how you brand it that counts – if you look at any of their other videos, they do a really great job of consistently branding themselves. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore, folks.