I know this will seem a little out there, but I thought you might want to hear about the night, back in the late 1980s, when I met an angel on Green Avenue.

There used to be an audio studio called Mark Five / Sandcastle, in a sort of industrial part of town off of White Horse Road. I was there producing some music for Quincy’s Steakhouse late one night. I had been dropped off at the studio. And since I finished around 9:30, and since I lived not too far away, I decided to walk home. I was a tough guy. I had walked through a lot of urban neighborhoods late at night in Pittsburgh. What could Greenville, SC do to me?

Problem was, I made a miscalculation. Instead of turning right at White Horse and going down to Grove Road (which would have gotten me home in about half an hour), I turned left on White Horse and went up to Anderson Road (which could have gotten me home to Heaven—that’s another story).

Well, I started walking along Anderson Road. There started to be fewer and fewer houses…burned out industrial buildings…fewer street lights…fewer cars…it was getting darker…and darker…and darker.

Finally, around 11:00, I found myself somewhere on Green Avenue. I saw some people on a stoop, in front of some sort of lighted store front up ahead. “Good,” I thought. “People.” Then I got this bad feeling, like maybe it wasn’t so good after all. It suddenly occurred to me that I had a shoulder bag full of one-of-a-kind audio masters, probably worth thousands of dollars.

A couple hundred yards from the stoop, I stopped and looked down at my feet for about ten seconds, to gather my thoughts. When I looked up, there was this tall African American guy about twenty feet away, walking right toward me. He was about 6′5″ tall. He was wearing a Kangol hat. And he was walking right for me…pretty fast.

I’ll never forget what he said, “Yo, yo, yo, my man. You must be lost, ’cause I know you don’t want to be here.”

Then, seeing I was clean-cut and white (I guess), he asked, “Are you from Bob Jones or something?”

I didn’t know at that point what answer would get me out of there alive. I wasn’t from Bob Jones. So I just decided to give him a non-responsive answer, “I’m just trying to get home,” I said.

“Where’s home?”

“Augusta Road.”

“Well, what you wanna do is cross the street. Look down at your feet. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t talk to anyone. Just keep walking. Go two blocks. Turn right. Go two blocks. And that’s Augusta Road.”

I followed his directions completely. To a tee. I believe the guy was an angel. And I believe he turned me invisible and walked me right around whatever was going on on that stoop. You may not believe it. But you weren’t there.

Barack rolled into town this afternoon, and our friend Kat got us tickets. She’s working on his campaign, and is very excited. So we took a little field trip to see what he had to say. All in all, it was a pretty useful time.

I hadn’t been to a presidential campaign event since the 80s, so this was a real treat. Totally branded. They had a gospel choir open the whole thing. They were solid. The sound wasn’t very well mixed. They could have used help from our pals Pat, Babe, and Duane. Then, there was a youth choir that reminded me of the Boys’ Choir of Harlem. Very exciting to see these kids perform. They did a version of Abraham, Martin, and John (this version left out the verses about Abraham and John). They also did sort of theatrical recitation of “I have a dream.”

They passed out some very slick, well-designed and printed (two-sided printing, so it could be photographed from either the front or the back) Barack Obama for President signs. They would pass some out, then someone would go up on the stage and get everybody holding them up—looking for holes in the crowd. Then, they would pass more out, specifically where the holes were. When they finally got a good balanced sea of “Obama Blue,” they passed out these hand-painted “grass-rootsey” looking signs, with slogans like, “seniors for Obama,” and “Obama 4 Change.” Then, they had college kids on risers on the stage, wearing college t-shirts from most of the North and South Carolina colleges. And they all had signs. It all made for sort of a Norman Rockwell picture of diversity and spontaneity.

They had a very articulate kid introduce Senator Obama—student body president from South Side High School.

Barack himself was very energetic (paced a lot, making it hard to get a photograph). Very articulate. Very charismatic. He’s the kind of guy you just enjoy listening to. He said all the good things. We need to concentrate on what unites us, not what divides us. We need to take care of our soldiers, regardless of how we feel about the war. We need to do better with preventive medicine and with information technology—and he claimed that this would save us about 5 percent on our overall health care (don’t quote me on that one, I wasn’t taking notes, and I’m not great at math).

And he was pretty funny. He said that his visionary optimism has the media saying, “all I talk about is ‘hope.’ They even called me a hope monger. That cracked me up. Remember that movie, Punch Line, with Tom Hanks and Sally Field, about the stand-up comedians, where Tom has the line, “They say I’m a hate monger, but I prefer to think of myself as a hate stylist.” If you never saw it, you didn’t miss much. But it was a funny line. And it was a funny line for Barack also.

He needs better music. He needs a theme song, like Clinton had, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.” A rocked out gospel tune would work for Barack, I think. Maybe one of those double-meaning Thomas A. Dorsey songs. Don’t know if he’s gonna get elected, but I know he is a rock star. Glad we did this today.

Well, I spoke to those Chamber folks, and it went great. I was on a panel with three very-knowledgeable ladies, and I learned some things. And the vibe was really good. A couple of things.

Remember my Fred Astaire post? Well, I used that example in my comments. Seemed to go over pretty well. But on a local level, as I was standing at the front of the room, sipping coffee, watching the people coming in, there was one woman who visually leaped out at me—Misha from K&G Fashion Superstore. She was wearing this wonderful bright red print top. And it grabbed my by the eyeballs from across the room.

The wonderful thing was that the red looked exactly right on Misha. So she got to be a little object lesson on the value of personal branding and color.

Also, I had a brief conversation with a lady whose son is a competitive inline skater—one of the high-flying extreme sports type. We were talking about the elements of branding as applied to a person. Of course, there are the old wardrobe, color palette, signature accessories, personal brand fragrance, and stuff like that. But in the case of her son, I recommended a book, the title of which I could not remember. Well, the book is High Visibility, by Irving Rein, Philip Kotler, and Martin Stoller. Unfortunately, it appears to be out of print. But it’s excellent. So maybe we can NTC Business Books, the publisher, and get them to do another edition.

Two other books that were pretty good on related topics: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Anatomy of Buzz, by Emanuel Rosen.

I read an article a while back, I think it was in GQ, in which Fred Astaire was cited as the most suave man in all of film. The support was that he could lean against a wall with his hands in his pockets, in a tux. Nobody else was cool enough to be that comfortable in a tux. Not Cary Grant. Not Hugh Grant. Not Denzel Washington. Not Not Chow Yun-Fat. Not any of the guys who played James Bond.

Of course, the deal is that Fred was such a great song-and-dance man for such a long time, and wore so many tuxes as costumes, that they were just clothes to him. By contrast, check out all those prom picture and wedding photos, with all those poor, stiff little guys, looking like they’re wearing somebody else’s clothes—because they are! I hate looking at myself in those pics.

This sort of reminds me of what happens when people do branding badly. You dress your company up in what some designer things ought to look cool. The expressions end up clashing with the trade dress, which ends up clashing with the physical locations, which end up clashing with the way people act and feel in the company. Who wants to buy anything from a company dressed up in somebody else’s clothes?

Found a very convenient space on level two this morning. Then, as I was getting out of the car, I noticed a car across the way with the door open.

I walked over and noticed that there was nobody in or near the car. Clothes were strewn across the back seat and passenger seat. Fast food bags and CDs in the passenger seat and on the floor. No dome light or door-open chime. Apparently the door had been open long enough to kill the battery (all night?).

I reported this to the attendant, who immediately picked up the phone to call it in. I can’t wait to learn the rest of the story. What do you suppose the deal is on this?

Thursday morning, I’ll be talking about branding to a group of small business people for the Chamber of Commerce East Side Council. This sort of thing is always a source of some anxiety for me, because no two of these folks need the same thing. Branding is so personal, ya know.

I think I’ll start by qualifying the group. How many are in retail? How many are in a service business? How many are in manufacturing (not a lot, I’m guessing)?

Then, I’ll probably talk about, “a brand is a promise.” I like that approach to differential advantage—keeps you customer focused. Since I expect that the majority will be either service or retail, I’ll probably talk a good bit about brand manners. It’s the old walk-it-like-ya-talk-it-or-you’ll-lose-that-beat. Probably talk about systemic, coordinated approach to the five senses. Put in my usual pitch for brand smell. Maybe touch on managing/packaging the evidence (invoicing, shopping bags, cash register tapes, follow-up communications, consulting reports). And I might even talk about the role of pricing in the branding of services.

Deep breath. Relax. Okay, it’ll be cool.

This is not a Willie Nelson post. Actually, I used to know a bluegrass band that sang that song, but changed the words from, “…nothin’s better than making music with my friends,” to, “…nothin’s better than making money with my friends.” They also had a song that went, “Please buy a record from us, so we can buy some gas for our bus.” Big hits. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m excited to be going on the road four days next week. Atlanta. Greenville. Asheville. Charlotte. High Point. Raleigh. There’s something incredibly cool about a rolling photo shoot with top notch art directors and a great photographer, whom you trust professionally and like personally.

I’ll try to blog from the road. But if I miss a day or so, sorry.

On the road again,
I just can’t wait to get on the road again.
There’s nothing better than makin’ pictures with my friends
(for an awesome client with photogenic people in hip locations),
And I can’t wait to get on the road again.

Have a weekend!

We’re about to go into one of our semi-weekly (or is it bi-weekly—it’s every second Friday anyway) programs meetings. It’s a meeting in which the whole crew comes together around our conference table to talk about our ongoing programs (new business, client appreciation, idea adoption, stuff like that). It usually takes two or three hours (today we’re having lunch brought in from Two Chefs). The whole crew. Two hours. That’s some brain power. And it’s some man hours.

The thing is, our culture is constantly evolving, with new personalities, new clients, new services, new skill sets, and a dynamic industry. It’s important for us to learn all the time. These meetings are great as huddles, to remind ourselves of our progress and our priorities (I’ve just now remembered how to seem).

The meetings are also great as an efficient way to learn, as a company. Everybody is expert on some topic. And each person is constantly learning new things…and teaching those things to the group. I actually get the benefit of reading 24 books a year, while only having to read three or four (I actually do read more than that, but that’s all I have to read).

So, it costs us a lot of valuable man hours. But it makes us what we are. So, that’s that.