Secondly, jack plants the seed or consideration in your brain. He sits directly in front of you and if you notice he doesn’t stare at the food, he looks you directly in the eyes. For Jack he must be noticed, he must be considered for his wish to potentially come true. Jack plants the seed of his success without saying a single word.

Finally for jack to be successful he is persistent. Think of how many times Jack has had to wait patiently only to be ignored while i stuffed my face with a sausage roll. He has failed time and time again but every once in a while, Jack gets something.

Are you getting some?

My Nana enjoyed a beautiful cup of tea several times a day. She meticulously prepared the Choysa bag in her favorite white mug. Neither did she know that there were ants in her kettle. No one knows how long the ants had been there and why they were there. All we know is that they were there and that’s concerning.

Let’s stop and check the kettle once in while.

This obviously works in Apples and the distributors favor in terms of fueling even more hype and publicity. The launch event then becomes much greater than the product itself. Whats left after the hype blows over, is a much more mundane and ordinary purchase that is to be avoided by the average Apple fan. The Apple fan wants to be anything but ordinary.

Imagine a world where paper is digital. This electronic paper is as thin as paper, flexible, wraps, folds, rolls, looks more or less like paper, but is far more technically advanced.

We pick up the morning paper from the grocer along with a coffee. The single sheet of digital paper is as cheap as paper but thats where the similarities end. We touch the center of the page to turn it on and instantly we see the first page of digital content, touch it again in the right hand corner and we move to the next. Double tap something of interest to zoom or activate media such as video or audio.

The digital paper could be designed to hold a preloaded piece of information such as a newspaper, company brochure or lecture. Alternatively, we could even update our paper over a wireless network and thats where things get exciting. Imagine a digital business card updating a changed phone number or a highlanders poster updating the latest rugby ticket prices. The possibilities are exciting and achievable.

Before we get carried away, the print industry does not need to close up shop just yet, razor thin digital screen technology has been a hot topic for television and computer manufacturers like Hewlett Packard for over 5 years, yet we have not seen a commercially viable paper thin digital product that can compete with the economics of paper for the mainstream.

Advancements are sure to come. We have found many ways to get website content from the internet to computer screens, laptops, our televisions, and even mobile phones but still nothing has come close to replacing paper. Until we get the technology thin enough, flexible enough, and digital paper with wireless delivery cheap enough, there is no beating paper just yet.

As business owners we are ready. Its been a tough ride but content management systems have improved in leaps and bounds and website owners are getting much smarter at presenting well written content, tailored for dissemination across many digital mediums. All that and the rise of Social Media. All in a good days work I would say. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? New mediums for digital content will mean that companies like Myth will no longer create websites, more likely we will create Digital Brands. The website and print industries are changing as we speak. It is the dawn of a new digital age.

Remarkably, if you are in business and you tell someone you tell stories this might seem to be something bad. I have to come clean and tell you I love stories, especially commercial stories. I am proud to be a master storyteller, a brand magician, stories excite me. Consumers love stories too.

Today on Breakfast I watched Brian Richards, an Auckland based Brand strategist, reiterate the importance of brand story development in the role of developing successful brands. This statement was in response to the Auckland Super City running a quick fire competition for a new logo to represent the city. The point is can you have a logo symbol without the story behind it? The answer is yes you can. You can design logo’s until your hearts content.

What you cannot do is fake a story and get away with it. You cannot throw a logo together and then create a story later because they wont match up. The brand story and logo originate from the same place. They represent the essence of an organisation. One should not exist without the other, though it does happen and when it does everyone senses there is something missing.

Great agencies get to the heart of what your organisation is about, where it has come from, where it is going, and they craft a grand representation of this through the art of design. Brand logos may often be seen as the final design output by clients, though the enlightened know they live more passionately when secured by a properly interpreted and understood brand story.

Dunedin…
The first city of New Zealand

This proposition draws heavily from an arguable competitive fact; that Dunedin was New Zealand’s first city. It fulfills the need of a defendable unique competitive advantage and differentiating factor compared to other centers. By placing the sentence in the present tense we create the motivating factor that would be missing from an historic reference and interpretation. The sentence is purposely made long to add a stately honourable feel in contrast to “New Zealand’s First City” which sounds rushed. Dunedin is a city of firsts.

Alternatives:

Dunedin
First to the future

Dunedin…
Where life begins

The “where life begins” slogan focuses on the lifestyle aspect of living and working in Dunedin, the defining and youthful student culture and the early settlement of Dunedin as the first city of New Zealand. Many people choose Dunedin for the lifestyle advantage and a slogan along this line would be considerable.

Think about it. High performance race cars have a team of people preparing them for the race, checking the oil, tyres, petrol, cleaning, and on and on. Once the race is started the pit stops are critical to the success and the maintenance of performance. After the race the support team starts the maintenance process, restoring the vehicle.

High performing people, take the time to properly prepare themselves between races and during the race they take the pit stops. High performing people have established a team of people or organisations that are responsible for keeping them at their best. In an English ad agency I met a guy called Oscar. Oscar worked harder than anyone I have ever met. Not in real life but in his head. The reason why things were so difficult for Oscar, more so than others with the same problems, same workload and pressures, was because Oscar was too busy to nurture himself as a high performing machine. He didn’t take the pit stops, didn’t rest between races, eventually as he tried to keep pace with himself his performance started to decline.

Like a high performance athlete or a top performing race horse, their performance in their chosen profession is not determined by one single strength. Success is determined by a multitude of factors that combine to define the whole. The training, food, experience, mental and physical conditioning, coaches, nutritionists, discipline, companionship and more combined.

Stop for a second and take a look at your support team. How do you rest between the races? When the race is on, when and where do you take your pit stop. What factors do you combine to ready and maintain yourself for peak performance. Check your eating, your exercise, your relaxation, find the people who will support you to look after yourself while you drive for performance. If you have been pushing hard like so many of us do, isn’t it time you devoted just as much effort to your number one asset. That asset is you.

Its not that we stop wanting, or stop dreaming. Its what happens to people when the roar of the positive voices slow. What happens to us when we stop being told we are special. In fact we learn that we are one of many. Every step takes us into a new environment that brings more challenge than nurture. Only we can say what will harm us or make us stronger.

What a world of possibility it is. It seems like a world of our own making. We have the power to follow the path of our destiny. You have the power to materialize the focus of your thoughts. Though many of us will not make it. We are too often and easily preoccupied. We are sitting ducks for the forces that await us. A system that will tempt us at every turn. It is proven and perfected. It starts at School with the best of intentions. Create routines, habits and conform to popular opinion.

Then work, earn, want more than you can afford. Live beyond your means, drown in debt and sell tomorrow for a fix today. Do you buy the hype, did you buy the latest gadget? Was it really necessary? Debt, more debt, advertising, more advertising. Want, need, what is the difference?

Too few moments left. The system will shake you up, poke you from your focus. Right now, try taking time for yourself. Distraction, carrots, chickens and sheep. Can you even begin to think about following through on what you really want from your life. Orange Monkey distraction. My guess is no and its not your fault, there is to much that will work against you. Tv so bright, so colorful. Computer so much knowledge, so many connections. Iphone applications that can do anything to fill a second of any spare moment. Sit still and focus.

You have been taught to dream but trained to conform, to compromise. You have been sold time and time again, the systems routines and an array of devices that will hold you in a state of confusion, a preoccupied state of distraction.

You are a creature of habit. You are you but a thousand stolen moments away from realizing who that really is.

Close your eyes, sleep, awake, start again. Its not to late, you must be the roar of positive voices. Its up to you now there is no one else that can take you on this journey. Anything is possible if you are willing to believe. Forget science, forget everything you know. Come to a place of peace with yourself. Turn in take a look, and with patience step forward with honesty. One true step, a pace out of time, a thousand eyes fall upon you, tempted no more, the path is clear.

Whats going on here! Why cant I take action! Its difficult to break free from our existing lifestyle and go after our goals when we are prisoners in our own routines. The routines are such that they require little thought to action. Just like driving a car really it becomes second nature and instinctual to live our lives on a day to day basis. Its kind of comfortable isn’t it. The problem is this doesn’t help us go after what we really want. Which in this case is a fit trim healthy body that can help me enjoy active living and last till a ripe old age.

Well if I cannot add to the routine or modify the routine lets work within the routine. Lets walk first before we run. Baby steps here we come! So here is my secret to sneaking exercise into your lifestyle without the requirement of any internal arguments or thought.

Every time you go to bathroom complete an exercise. Thats right in the hallway before you enter or after get physical. For me its press-ups and sit-ups. Start off small but make this a must do! Every time you go perform the task. Soon you will be completing 4-5 sets of physical activity each day or start avoiding the bathroom altogether!

Now what I like about this is that there is no lead up to the activity. For example, you don’t need to go through a rountine of behaviors before you even get to the exercise. So no getting dressed, or driving and its free. The chance of avoiding exercise is greatly diminished. You simply must go to the bathroom eventually and therefore do exercise.

Now if you psychologists out there are worried about associative conditioning, as I am sure you are, then lets mix this up a bit for fun. You don’t need to do the bathroom, next week it could be when you do the washing or get out of bed. You can even do other activities like squats or star jumps whatever takes your fancy.  Soon their will be a gym in your head and a gym waiting around every corner of your house. Soon you will be walking towards you goal and really soon you will be able to start adding new actions into your routine like going for that run. Until then ring your own bell like a really smart Pavlov’s dog.