“To Understand the Brand, first Understand the Entrepreneur”
The entrepreneurs featured in the book and therefore in this article, have built empires without MBAs or outside capital by harnessing their “lightning in a bottle”, which is passion, determination (desperation), and by being the embodiment of a popular need.

Four Closing Remarks from the Panel:

• “Don’t build a “professional-looking” brand, instead feature your ideas and character. Create a culture of trust with your community online and off, and remember that as an entrepreneur, you should have fun.” – Craig of www.Craigslist.com

• “Inner resources move more mountains than Capital. Throw a lot on the wall and see what sticks” – Roxanne Quimby of Burt’s Bees (who was living in a tent with her two children when she started, and sold her brand for $175 million after nine years)
• “Make the show half about you, and half about your clients” – Carolyn Kepcher of Carolyn and Co, author of www.findingwhatmatters.com, and recent star of NBC’s “Apprentice” TV Show.
• “Learn to be OK with failing, there’s always the next inning. Fail quickly, cheaply and keep innovating.” – John Peterson of the Peterson Store

Six Chapters:

1. Sweat the Small Stuff: Search for client-facing details that can be tweaked
2. Pick a Fight: Don’t Introduce a New Product if the existing products are sufficient
3. Be Your Own Customer: Address how your consumer/client feels at every interaction
4. Be Naturally Persistent: A promising startup can take decades to grow into an empire
5. Build a Myth: Craft a charming story that conveys what’s special about the brand. Convince the staff, they are your biggest allies
6. Be Faithful (to the Product, Brand, Personality) when offered financing & partnerships – Remember your core users and uphold what they value you for

THE DILEMMA: Unless you’re joining the elite networks of MBA graduates from top schools such as Wharton and Harvard, “evidence suggests” (no study quoted) that the typical MBA now brings only modest value to the average graduate’s salary, and has little impact on career advancement. In a world full of MBAs, possession of the label no longer differentiates, unless you have gone to one of the very top schools.

THE FIX: A Financial Times editorial said: “Institutions have to differentiate their offerings and create brands, something only a few have succeeded in doing.”

THE LITERATURE: Tellingly, many of the most popular business books of modern times have emerged from the self-schooled entrepreneurs. Indeed, the most successful book ever with Harvard in its title is actually What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School: Notes From A Street-Smart Executive, by Mark H McCormack, founder of a sports management firm. (Incidentally, it has a sequel, What They Still Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School.)

THE BENEFIT: Businesses and business systems have their own histories. If those who study and then run businesses are to make a real difference, and navigate through the challenges of the future, they must understand how to manage and capitalize on all aspects of business: not just economics, but also social, cultural, technical, and psychological perspectives.

A! –The challenge in “standing up for ourselves,” is that it’s nearly impossible to “be heard” over the Babble. How do we make people stop and take notice? The internet has granted us all unlimited voice, but will anyone “hear us” above other equally-liberated voices?

My choice is frequent social networking (Facebook) and blogging (try Google-owned Blogspot). Friends and family are likely the first to listen. However, for the next step, you can join aggregated blog-spheres that serve up the best independently-written articles to readers as determined relevant by a keyword search and judged informative by a public/private moderation panel. I recommend Technorati, Zimbio, and (for the MySpace crowd) IceRocket for starters.

Historically, ordinary citizens have written to politicians directly, attended rallies, and (due to this same problem) depended on local leaders to voice their most dynamic concerns to state and national leaders. Our traditional means of information gathering (television, radio, books, magazine, newspapers) have proliferated themselves into a state of diminutive relevance. A decade ago, media executives held exclusive channels to mass communications; since then the internet and desktop publishing has opened communication channels to everyone. But, there is little order.

Over the past five years, information has become so readily available in unorganized free formats that organized media vehicles are desperate for attention and revenue. This year, internet-informed voters are impacting the election, and conventional media is blind-sided. The Hollywood writers may be back, but social-media networks such as YouTube and Facebook are flooded by independents who frequently lack judgment, tact, and accountability.

SUMMARY: In financial and medical marketing, plans that integrate print, online and event advertising bring the best results. As trade publications feel the squeeze in their advertising revenue, some top publishers are selling their titles. What’s evolving? Publishers are combining the benefits of online and event marketing into ongoing online networking communities.

TREND: Trade magazines were until recently seen as among the most promising of advertising media. Because they enabled brands to reach highly targeted audiences, they were supposed to be more resilient than (pubic-sector) newspapers. Now, however, a structural shift of advertising spending to the internet has combined with fears that advertisers will cut budgets in a threatening economy.

SURVEY: In a poll of advertisers last year, Outsell discovered that the decline in print revenues did not simply reflect the triumph of search engines. Advertisers believed trade magazines were better at generating business leads than search engines, but that trade shows were more effective still, says Chuck Richard, lead analyst at Outsell. Tellingly, “transactional” activities such as trade shows have now overtaken advertising, accounting for 39 per cent of the sector’s revenues.

BOTTOM LINE: “A publisher that is not offering events is missing out on marketing dollars,” the study concluded. “There is still hope for print,” says Mr Richard, “as advertisers find their campaigns work best run across several media at once.”

Other Candidates Get Free Consumer-Created Media; Barack’s Just Happen to Be Made by Smitten Ad Pros: Perhaps the most viewed bit of political advertising this campaign season is a four-minute-plus video for Barack Obama. “Yes We Can” — a slick, celebrity-filled spot that has garnered more than 10 million online views — was created by professionals. But none of them work for the Obama campaign.

Whether it will sway the outcome of the presidential race no one can know, but the ad certainly seems to encapsulate the fact that Mr. Obama has emerged as the darling of the advertising world’s creative set.

Pop Culture Videos for Obama:
“Yes We Can” - written and produced by Black-Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, Jesse Dylan (son of Bob) and Mike Jurkovac, a former VP-director of integration at FCB. According to Viral Video Chart, at press time it had garnered 10,540,006 views.

“Hope Changes Everything,” an Obama-as-rockstar video tribute created by Eric Hirshberg, president-chief creative officer of Deutsch, Los Angeles.

“Obama Girl” videos, courtesy of a group that included Ben Relles, who was once a staffer at Omnicom Group’s Agency.com.

In this capacity for eight months, I had the honor of working with the Publication Directors, editors, designers and salespeople responsible for leading newsmagazines such as General Surgery News, Pharmacy Practice News, and Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News.