After 63 years, Honest Ed’s is more than a store; it’s a well established and successful brand. Its architecture brings together vision, voice and benefits that together provide the inspiration and personality of a lasting brand. That is why, year’s later, Honest Ed’s remains memorable, instantly recognizable and has an emotional community-based appeal and relevance.

Successful brands are unique and beyond compare; they are instantly recognizable and build an emotional connection with their customers. A great brand should be distinct, exude personality and resonate loudly with a lucrative set of customers. Simply put, brand is the personification of your product or service, enabling customers to engage and build a relationship with it.

Are your customers still following a trail back to you decades later? If not, make 2012 your first step in building a lasting brand experience to delight your customers.

Image from a Shreddies campaign in 2008

When I ask business owners and managers about innovation, many of them talk about ideas they have percolating but they have never pursued.

They’re too busy fighting front-burner issues to think about anything new. But if innovation is going to be a source of new products and revenues, I have three words for you, from one of the world’s most innovative companies: Just Do It.

t’s as simple as that. Innovation is about bringing ideas to market rather than letting them languish on a half-forgotten scratchpad. And innovation doesn’t necessarily mean invention. More often, it’s about acting on an opportunity you have already recognized, or adapting existing solutions for other markets or industries.

How simple can innovation be? Consider these examples:

Seeing the same thing in a different way

Think of the publicity coup for Post’s Shreddies – and its 18-point gain in market share – when it reintroduced the timeless breakfast cereal in diamond shapes rather than squares.

Exploring new markets with the same products (or slightly adapted features)

Toy giant Lego has launched a Lego Friends brand to target girls in addition to its dominating “boy brands” such as Star Wars Lego and Lego Ninjago.

Tapping into (or teaming up with) new market trends

Hyundai now provides a multimedia tablet as an owner’s manual instead of the traditional printed book.

Bringing together features from existing products or markets to create something “new”

The maker of SLAP Watch offers a unique twist on silicone watches with interchangeable faces, bright colours, and spring-coil bracelet – all in one item.

Innovation is the engine that drives your business forward. Think about it: customers are engaged by new and exciting products and services. It gives them something to talk about, a reason to buy again, and more often.

You wouldn’t change the oil in your car just once a year – the engine would sputter and die. Your company shouldn’t leave ideation, innovation or the introduction of new – even small – improvements to an annual schedule. Without the tune-up of continuing innovation, your business will also sputter and die.

You should make 2012 the year that innovation becomes a continuous, front-burner activity, just like sales and marketing.

How do you take the first step in your business? Set aside a 15-minute slot in your weekly sales and marketing meeting. Ask everyone at the table to talk about one interesting innovation they have seen in your industry, or better yet, an industry far from your own. Discuss which examples are most applicable to your business, then charge a person or team to flesh those ideas out. Monitor their progress monthly in the same team meetings. Success breeds success, and feedback and inclusivity are its lifeblood.

Winning through innovation doesn’t have to be scary, painful or expensive. Business owners and managers can do it step by step. Start by creating an environment in which employees, trusted partners and even customers offer great new product and service ideas. The active ingredient in “win-novation” is simply creating a process to examine those ideas and pursue the best of them.

The cost is low, the potential sky-high. It’s better to implement a number of smaller innovations than to have big ideas and do nothing with them.

Research in Motion is takings its lumps these days, but I am impressed by RiM’s new 9900 series BlackBerry. Since fully touch-screen phones came out, I have resisted. I am not a short-form, emoticon kind of guy, and I never felt touch-screen phones were conducive to the long-form e-mails that occupy my day.

I always hoped somebody would combine a sturdy keypad with touch-screen navigation. Well, BlackBerry’s done it. Who knows, if the financial pundits would only leave them to their innovating ways, we might see more of the ground-breaking innovation that took RiM to the top for so long.

As tough as it may be, every company needs to block out the noise and keep a focused eye on new and relevant product introductions. Always.

‘Talking to Entrepreneurs’ is a new three-part video series which taps into the minds of some of Canada’s brightest business owners. In Part Two, Ken Tencer, co-author of the 90% Rule and CEO of Spyder Works Inc. offers advice on motivating your team and holding onto superstar employees.

Watch the Video

We often read about companies that endure bumpy, life-threatening transitions as they pass from one generation to another. While they make good stories, they mask the fact that if you plan your succession process properly, there’s no need for things to go bad.

Case in point: Mississauga-based McLoughlin Promotions Ltd., a promotions-marketing company founded by Don and Lee McLoughlin in 1988.

Five years ago, when Mr. McLoughlin reached his early 60s, they transferred management of the company to their 30-year-old son, David. Given the fragile economy and the current upheaval in marketing, there are many reasons why the transition might have failed – but years of preparation ensured a smooth transfer of power.

The first thing the McLoughlins did right was to diversify their assets. As the company thrived through the 1990s – selling pens, t-shirts, trophies and other promotional knick-knacks to corporate clients – Don and Lee never let money accumulate in the business. They withdrew profits through dividends and deposited them in a retirement plan.

They knew that a company that distributes promotional products, like many service businesses, doesn’t build much long-term value: “Its only real asset is relationships,” Mr. McLoughlin says.

In a group interview with the three family members in the McLoughlin boardroom, the founding partners said they were never sure they’d even be able to sell the company. “We thought we might just close the doors,” Ms. McLoughlin says.

“A lot of people in our industry, if they had a good year, they would spend all the profits,” Mr. McLoughlin adds. “We didn’t. We were always prepared that the company would not fetch a lot of money.”

Another smart move came even earlier – the McLoughlins made sure their two children understood the value of money. To raise spending money, David and his sister Karen would sell vegetables in the summer at the family’s hobby farm near Collingwood. One year the parents gave each child a lamb (they used to raise sheep) to fatten up over the summer. But David’s sheep died, teaching him that no return is guaranteed.

David’s sister, a nurse, showed no interest in a career in the business. David joined the company after university, but he worked in the warehouse while trying to decide what to do with his life. In 2000, at age 25, he took a skills-assessment test that said he had great aptitude for sales. David realized he should exercise that talent.

Dressing up in a suit and tie, David invited his father to lunch and formally asked for an office job. Mr. McLoughlin agreed, but told his son to ask his mother, too. That night, over dinner, Ms. McLoughlin put her son on probation. “I was worrying about what would happen if this didn’t work out,” she says. “How do you fire your own son? So I said, ‘we’ll try it for six weeks, and see how it goes.’”

David started as an account co-ordinator, accepting a tough assignment to overhaul the promo catalogue for McLoughlin’s biggest customer. He rooted out old, tired products and sourced exciting new ones, winning himself a permanent spot in the company. David proved he was totally committed and that he could lead the business forward.

In 2003, David was named sales manager. Although his father retained his title of president, he withdrew from day-to-day running of the business, letting David make the decisions. “You can’t be looking over his shoulder if you’re expecting him to be the authority,” Mr. McLoughlin says. “People would say: ‘who’s running things around here?’”

In October, 2004, he called David into his office again, and presented him with a piece of paper that set out a transition plan to make David president, and enabling him to buy the company. He had earned his parents’ trust and respect.

The plan was geared toward making things as fair as possible for David. His father would be gone within two months. His mother, not ready to retire, would stay on, working with her accounts and helping David learn the financial aspects of the business.

Using an estate freeze, the value of the company was frozen – from here on, David would benefit from the growth of the company. And because he was still young, and short on financial resources, the plan called for him to start buying his parents’ shares only when the company hit certain financial milestones.

David, Don and Lee spent weeks working on the plan with the company’s lawyer and accountant, to translate the parents’ goodwill into a legal, workable framework. They were pleased that the valuation the accountants calculated matched Mr. McLoughlin’s estimate. “If it had been higher, that would’ve been tough,” David says.

After Mr. McLoughlin retired, David restructured the company in ways his parents would not likely have envisioned. He focused more on higher-margin marketing promotions than on commodity products, and he devoted himself to business development by helping clients achieve measurable results from their promotions.

He eliminated McLoughlin’s inventory and warehouse, downsizing the company dramatically. In 2007, he moved the company into a smaller building in Mississauga, and he told his mother there was no office for her. After two-and-a-half years tutoring David on the financial side, her job was now finished.

“That came as a bit of a surprise,” she says. “But I needed a bit of a push.”

While McLoughlin is still pioneering David’s new marketing vision the family believes David’s restructuring was the right thing to do. As the economy picks up, the parents hope they will soon be able to start divesting their shares. But they’re in no hurry. “If we had put a timetable in place, it would’ve been awfully hard [for David] to make things work,” Ms. McLoughlin says. “We foresaw that.”

The parents have also been forgiving about David’s reporting style. The only formal feedback they get on the company is an annual report – plus verbal updates whenever David drops by for dinner with his wife and new baby. “That’s one thing I would like to do better,” David admits.

“I would like to get a written quarterly report. I think that that would be prudent,” Mr. McLoughlin says.

But he doesn’t want to press his son too much as he deals with today’s market challenges. “It’s sink or swim,” he points out. “David knows that if this doesn’t work, it’s gone. We’re not coming back.”

Hearing his parents describe his future in such stark terms, David offers a better metaphor: “This lamb better not die on me.”

But what about Brand U?  No, that’s not a new university for branding.  It’s a reference to building our own personal brands. We have beliefs, actions and thoughts that matter to our employers, friends, family and foes. And they have a profound effect over the path that our careers are going to take.

Today, we are all thrust into the public eye whether we like it or not. In case you missed it, Facebook has surpassed the 500 million user mark. So, just like companies, we need to make sure that ‘what is out there’ is our best, all of the time. Because once you press send, post or share, the world is its oyster.

So, what’s my litmus test? I ask myself, would I mind if the picture, story, phrase or thought were published on the front page of our national newspaper. If the answer is yes, I am good to go. Otherwise, the delete button is my best friend at that moment.

Remember, the circulation of the national newspaper pales in comparison to the readership numbers in cyberspace!

- Ken Tencer

You want it to make as many friends (customers) out there in the market as it can. A relevant brand is one that is speaking to the right group of people, saying things that they relate to, that will prompt them to buy, and that says it in a way that is different from the competitors. Understanding your relevant brand is essential to building a base from which you can strategically diversify from.

-Ken Tencer

*Adapted from an interview on The Business Coach, Episode 77 on Business Expansion Strategy at http://www.profitguide.com/podcast/532–podcast-77-business-expansion-strategy

It forces companies to move past the traditional features and benefits model to our personification and impact exercises. One example that always inspired me to a higher understanding of my own business is what Charles Revson of Revlon fame said, “we are not in the business of manufacturing cosmetics, we are in the business of selling hope.” That’s powerful.

-Ken Tencer

*Adapted from an interview on The Business Coach, Episode 77 on Business Expansion Strategy at http://www.profitguide.com/podcast/532–podcast-77-business-expansion-strategy

The words that I like to associate with diversification are next-step and logical. They help to focus companies on what they are great at so that they can better understand what they can or should do next. Apple is a really good example for knowing what they are great at – design-driven, personal technology – which has helped them move from computing to i-pods, the i-phone and now the i-pad.*

-Ken Tencer

*Adapted from an interview on The Business Coach, Episode 77 on Business Expansion Strategy at http://www.profitguide.com/podcast/532–podcast-77-business-expansion-strategy

Two things struck me in reading the announcement that I thought that we could all do with reminding of:

My own personal cult brand? Yes, I am one of those Saab fanatics to whom Mr. Muller refers. Time to win “me” back. The lesson to all of us, don’t lose “me” in the first place: I am your bread and butter customer.