The Sears Tower in Chicago has added a glass-bottomed observation deck 100-plus stories high on the tower that allows the observer to step out on the deck for a unique, breathtaking view. They call it, “The Ledge!” You can click here for the video and here for some cool pics!

This is noteworthy not just because it’s an innovative idea, but because it reminds us how easily innovation can be achieved if we’ll just take the time to interact with and listen to our customers! As you’ll hear from Sears Tower Skydeck General Manager Randy Stancik at about the video’s 90-second mark, “The idea came from our visitors. Our visitors have asked us to get outside. They want to get closer to the windows,” So they looked into it and, sure enough, an elite team of engineers and builders made it so. They were willing to literally go out on a ledge for their customers!

Innovation can be as simple as responding when our customers give us a suggestion! We have to be willing to “go out on a ledge” by having the courage to listen, then to take what they suggest seriously, and be willing to deliver on what they’re asking for. A risk, yes, but far less risky than just hoping our customers are happy only to find out we lost them to competitors who were listening and were willing to step out into the unknown for them!

The other day I went on John Deere’s website to get my 2 year old son a John Deere cap to replace the toddler-sized one he’d outgrown. While there, I also bought the little fellow a John Deere Toy Lawn Trimmer, seriously considered a John Deere Toy mower, and would have probably bought him a really cool motorized 6 Volt Utility Tractor with Loader (click here to get a look at this thing and tell me it’s not the coolest thing ever!) Fortunately, Mrs. Dr. Burt confiscated the credit card before these impulse buys got the best of me.

John Deere’s real value, it’s real capital, it’s real “green,” is in the power of it’s brand. When Mr. Deere founded the company, he based everything he did on the guiding principle, “I will not put my name on anything that does not have in it the best that is in me.” This commitment to excellence has lasted well over 100 years! It has VALUE because it connects with the customer, the customer believes it, trusts the brand, and is willing to pay a premium for it. John Deere is a brand we can bank on.

This brand loyalty isn’t just true for the heavy equipment which makes up their core product offering, but for any and all ancillary products loyal customers can purchase with the John Deere name on them. John Deere doesn’t make toy trimmers or caps or any of those items. Toy companies and apparel companies and other vendors line up outside John Deere’s doors and pay a hefty licensing fee for the use of the John Deere logo and color scheme, which they’ll then use to  market a line of products using the John Deere name, for which John Deere will receive a generous royalty. The hefty horsepower of the brand lets John Deere make money on the front end with the licensing fees and on the back end with royalties. John Deere wins, the merchandisers win, and of course, the customers win because we’re all part of a value-for-value brand experience.

J. Paul Getty, one of the first “celebrity millionaires,” was often asked for a formula for getting rich. He replied, “Rise early, work hard, and strike oil!” If you build a solid brand, it’s better than striking oil! The residuals are incredible, the passive income is there, and you don’t have to get your hands dirty or deal with the EPA!

You hear a lot these days about how much more stressful it is to live in the 21st century, and certainly, each generation has its own dragons to slay. At the time of this writing, the craziness of the economy has us all wondering what the heck could be around the corner, what will help turn things around, and how quickly. But I think Warren Buffett really put it in perspective.

He was filmed for a CNBC special as he spoke to an MBA class somewhere back east a couple of years ago. He philosophized that most 21st Century Americans have it far better than even the richest Americans had it at the beginning of the 20th Century. He said proudly that, in many ways, the average American today is richer than the Rockefellers of the early 20th Century!

He explained how even the poorest of us have every basic need met, or can get access to some means of meeting our basic needs. As he put it, in typical simplified, Warren Buffett fashion, we’re cool in the summer and warm in the winter!  We have central heat and air, television, public schools, public libraries, and accessible health care. We can visit a restaurant and have a staff cater to our satisfaction. Or we can pick up the phone and have many of our favorite foods delivered right to our door. We have entire television networks and motion picture studios spending billions developing programming in an attempt to win our favor! Rich folks and even royalty didn’t have it as good a little over a hundred years ago as the average American does today!

I would further argue that, in most cases, if an American today isn’t happy with his or her current station in life, the means to change that situation are within their grasps. If they seek additional education, there are loans and grants available to help them on their journey. If for some reason a formal education is not what they want, they only have to put on their entrepreneurial hats and look for a gap in the marketplace and fill it. That’s how it works in a free market economy! If they seek a job, all they have to do is be the kind of employee they’d like to have if they owned the business, and they’ll be able to write their own tickets in most organizations. 

Most of the luxuries Mr. Buffett mentioned are available and affordable to the masses today because a visionary like YOU saw the possibilities! Hard work, ambition, and a positive attitude will still yield great returns. 2009 is here and so is our future. Let’s not squander our energy worrying, but instead let’s spend it focusing on what’s possible!

P.S. - Thanks to all of you who’ve sent congratulations for our BLOG’s nomination in this year’s 2008 Okie Blog Awards! Thanks especially for clicking HERE and voting!

I heard an interesting ad on the radio recently. It was from a fellow selling his “real estate system” in which he promised to teach those who bought his program how to profit from the current real estate slump. One of his attention-getters was, “America is on sale!”, meaning that there are currently bargains all around us thanks to the decline in real estate prices. I thought that was a good way to phrase things not just because it’s a noteworthy “grabber,” but because I tend to agree! As I’ve said in previous posts, those of you who have managed your operations well up to this point will find a great many opportunities to grow your business in a time when everyone else is scrambling to hang on. In fact, I recently moderated a panel consisting of two of our former mayors and the current president of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. They were restating that not only is OKC in a good position because of how we’ve managed our resources up to this point, but how the current downturn could be the perfect time to expand the city’s horizons because it’s easier to negotiate for better deals on resources if you have a stronger cash position when everyone else is worrying about how they’re going to meet their current needs. As the panel emphasized, that’s just as true for a city as it is for any business or organization. You can read more about it here.

A downturn is also, absolutely, NOT the time to cut your promotional budget. If everyone else is cutting back, that means the landscape is less cluttered, so YOUR message has a better chance of getting through. Additionally, you’ll be viewed as the kind of confident organization your customers can trust in these uncertain economic times.

You need to be out assertively NETWORKING for the same reasons! As mentioned repeatedly in The Great Game of Networking, networking is the most cost-effective, powerful, customizable branding strategy you can employ any time, but especially when you’re watching your budget! 

The market is always fertile soil for an organization like YOURS who provides VALUE for your customers! In fact, if you’re as passionate about what you do as I think you are, you know they need you now more than ever! So let’s all roll up our sleeves and get busy this month planting the seeds for next month’s prosperity!

 The time to buy is at the time of maximum pessimism - Sir John Templeton

If we had to pick a category and “label” this campaign, indeed, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support the conclusion that the Ford Edsel was a failure. But I am not that crazy about putting things into boxes or assigning definite labels. I think there’s more profit to be derived from looking at everything as a learning opportunity.

The Edsel was a bust from the start as far as how the public turned up its nose at it, so yes, from a marketing standpoint it was a complete and utter flop. The customer IS the answer, and if the customer says “No,” then you can’t get much more straightforward than that.

On the other hand, the Edsel featured several innovations in terms of driver safety, which would be used to improve the designs of later models. From that standpoint, Ford was able to derive significant value from the investment in the Edsel and reinvest that value in future offerings for the marketplace.

Marketers call this “relative product failure.” Relative to the original goal of starting a profitable new product line, it fell short. However, It was not an absolute failure because the investment in its development paid dividends later on for the company. It’s not a bad idea for us to constantly inventory all of our “failures” and see how we can, in, fact, cash in on them. My bet is that you and I could swap quite a few stories about things that we’ve been through either in business or in our personal lives that at first seemed like disasters, and in retrospect became things that we’re grateful for today because they’ve paid off in the long run. And we’re all in it for the long run!

Success is a journey, not a
destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. –
Arthur Ashe