My walk to work got me thinking about branding. A prominent church on my route has begun posting a sign outside its doors that proclaims “Church is Cool” in big, bold letters. Walk a little closer and the fine print in parentheses below reads “And Air Conditioned Too.”

Set aside for a moment – if you can – thoughts of religion, what it means to be cool, and the obvious play on words. Think about the statement itself, and how a branding guru would critically analyze it. Marty Neumeier captures it best in his whiteboard overview, The Brand Gap, when he writes, “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.”

That’s just it: you can’t tell someone what they should believe or how they should feel about your business or organization. You have to guide their perception through consistent, heartfelt interaction and delivered promises and expectations.

Building a brand doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t wake up one morning with a new logo or a revised declarative statement and suddenly proclaim a new brand identity. There are too many intangibles that outweigh the superficial “look and feel” of a brand.

We have a common saying in our office: “People remember half of what they read, a third of what you tell them, and 100 percent of what they feel.” That gut feeling is what a brand is all about – and no sign on my way to work will persuade me to think otherwise.

Most of us consider ourselves relatively creative. We may figure out new ways to solve problems. We may think of a new tagline for a company. We may develop new software. Or we may just find a better way to answer the phone. But many people who think of themselves as creative may not be getting the chance to use that creativity in their jobs.

A new survey released by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority in Virginia, showed that while 88 percent of people say they have what they’d call theirs a creative personality, only 75 percent of people said their employers valued their creativity and only 63 percent actually considered their job a creative position.

The survey was released in advance of the 2007 National Conference on the Creative Economy.

The difference between the 88 percent of people who consider themselves creative and the 63 precent that say they use their creativity in their job has been coined the “Creative Gap” by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority and Rise of the Creative Class author, Richard Florida.

Most CEOs I talk to say, “The difference is our people,” or “We have the best people,” or “Our people are our strength.” But this gap shows that some CEOs are not acting to get the most out of their people. They’re not taking advantage of the creativity most people think they have. So how can you change that in your company?

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, says that one of the keys to becoming a great company is to “put the right people in the right seats on the bus.” Maybe you have your most creative problem solver in a marketing role. Or maybe the person with the best graphic mind is answering your phones. Maybe your finance director is the best business process person in the industry. They may not have the most experience, but they may the people – your secret weapons – that make your company great. And they may feel more fulfilled and more loyal to you for having the opportunity to use their creativity.

In today’s creative economy, we need to focus a little more on minding the creativity gap.

iTunes regularly sells songs compilation style according to genre, era or some other common thread. You can buy 50 or so songs that serve as a crash course in your sound-du-jour. They have everything from “Classic Elvis” to “80s Punk” to “Titans of Opera.” It’s a great way for interested listeners to discover new types of music.

But here’s where Apple really puts it to work. There’s one compilation called “Commercial Appeal.” It’s contents? Hip, underground songs that appear in today’s latest commercials – all those songs that get stuck in your head but you just don’t know who wrote them. What’s more, the first five songs on the compilation are from – you guessed it – Apple ads. Feist’s “1234,” the playful, bouncy tune that drives the new iPod nano ads, is at the top of the list. Simply brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qP79rRzzh4

Running through the ads – I mean songs – I began to think about the smartness of the whole thing. Companies like Liberty Mutual, Kia, Tide and more were reaching me because of the songs they selected for their ads. It wasn’t the effectiveness of their ads, but the second go-around as a song sold on iTunes that got my attention.

The takeaway? Cross-promotion across an ever-increasing number of channels is a very smart way to deliver your brand to an audience. I specifically say brand – not product – on purpose there. I don’t care about what Liberty Mutual is selling, but I dig them for using “The Part Where You Let Go” by Hem in their ad.

Oh, and props to Apple for putting the whole thing together.

Happy birthday to you, .  At 11:44 am on September 19, 1982, Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University typed you into a chat room, and you changed our world forever. 

There are many famous smiles that have come to gain wide notoriety throughout history.  The Mona Lisa, the smiley face of the 1960s, the Chesire Cat.  But I would argue that none have had the impact of .

Fahlman created the while discussing the limits of expressing humor in online communication.  This was his response:

“I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: ,” wrote Fahlman. “Read it sideways.”

We tell our clients in our media training session that 55% of communication is how you look (body language, expression, etc.), 38% is how you sound (pitch, tone, volume, etc.) and only 7% is what you say.

So Fahlman and his colleagues at the dawn of online communication found themselves without 93% of their means to communicate.  (Today, we still do much of our communications this way.)  They needed someway to communicate tone, sarcasm, pitch, expression without any of those abilities.  So they copied them with simple, easy to write and understand icons.  In some ways, you could say they went back to the days of the caveman – when symbols mattered.  They were able to overcome communications challenges.  They showed that there are many ways to communicate, and it is up to us to figure them out.

Today, emoticons (as the and its cousins are known) transcend the online world.  They’ve made their way onto mobile phones, into the media and in some cases, into corporate communications.  They’ve spawned generations of people who embrace and use symbols to communicate.  And they’ve widened the possibility of expression in all media.

Congratulations to Falhman on 25 years of better communication. 

The Old City District’s new slogan, Hipstoric™, is causing ripples in Philadelphia and the reaction in the blogosphere has been rather negative.

Philadelphia Weekly’s “Philadelphia Will Do” blog was particularly harsh. This week they posted a new entry “Old City Slogan Is Shit-Tastic!”   As the post reviews the run-of-the-mill press release issued by Old City District (whose acronym, I might add, is OCD), it’s cut off by an abrupt interjection:

“Okay, stop. That’s enough. I can’t take it. Hipstoric™? And — yes, I looked it up — it’s registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I can’t take it anymore. Enough, I’m done for today, possibly forever. Thanks a lot, Old City District!”

Additional comments ranged from harsh (“Hipstoric?? Not in my town scum bag!” to apathetically amused (“You know my Hipstoric don’t lie…and I’m starting to feel it’s right”).

These anecdotal opinions definitely throw the cold shoulder to Hipstoric™,.  but to get a broader perspective, I polled our agency networks to gauge response from the business and branding community. Here’s what a few of them had to say:

“On a good note – it immediately conjures the historic aspect of old city, but with a twist. On a bad note – it’s a little awkward to say.”

“I like it.  It’s a provocative bold stroke from a branding firm.”

“Every nook and cranny of the earth thinks they can create tourism and get an economic payday by coming up with a slogan. With the exceptions of a few (“I love NY,” “Virginia is for Lovers,” and “Philly’s More Fun When You Sleep Over”), they’re largely ineffective.”

“It’s familiar and yet unique. It doesn’t try too hard.”

So there you have it – more opinions to balance out the equation. Our take: “Hipstoric” deserves more credit than PW gives it, but it’ll take a lot more than a catchy word to make an impact.