Now BBH New York and UNICEF USA have teamed up with Threadless and Justin & Christine to create and sell a line of collectable t-shirts that will cost the exact amount of the relief service that is depicted on the shirt.  So for a tidy  $300,000, you can sport the world’s most expensive t-shirt and delivering a heap of desperately need aid via air cargo transport.

I love this idea.  Where in your branding could you put this kind of thinking to work?

It starts at the core of your organization.  Who is held accountable within your company for customer experience?  Is it the customer service department or is it integral to the DNA of your entire organization?  Is your customer data accessible across the company or does it live in line-of-business or departmental silos?  Where does customer feedback fit?  Do you actually do anything with it?  Are you modifying business processes or making organizational changes to better deliver on the customer experience?  This is where a digital strategy begins.

As a start, check out his FREE e-book, “The Six Laws of Customer Experience“

Nancy Duarte’s talk at TEDx East from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

How would you like to present your Brand’s next big idea with the precision and passion of Apple’s Steve Jobs iPhone introduction or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech?  A friend sent me an email this weekend with the link to Nancy Duarte’s video presentation at TEDx East on Vimeo (embedded above).  Having recently read Nancy’s book, “Resonate“, the video codified the elements she puts forward in the book:

• Connect with your audience empathetically
• Craft ideas that get repeated
• Rely on story structures inherent in great communication
• Create captivating content
• Inspire enthusiasm and support for your vision

The video is 20 minutes long but well worth the investment of your time and attention.

We are exposed to thousands of packaging designs every day as modern consumers.  From the wrappers on the candy by our favorite supermarket checkout stand to the hardshell plastic packaging that seems to have been designed specifically to keep the customer from getting to the product they purchased, each is a result of a packaging and brand designers use of their special powers.  Let’s step behind the scenes of an award-winning design firm, HBN Brand Design, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and take a look at how they used their powers for good to redesign the Sun & Earth product packaging, an effort that won them the Package Design Magazine’s Annual Makeover Challenge.  According to Dwight Nelson, President of HBN Brand Design,

“Our goal was to give the Sun & Earth brand a memorable image and ownable design that reflects their brand values of natural, safe, gentle and effective.

Our first step in creating a new look was to review the competition. Although some of the larger brands do a good job of creating strong brand recognition through simple messaging, we felt that most of the existing brands in the marketplace are busy, clunky and industrial looking, rather than natural and safe feeling.

After reviewing the competition and pouring over Sun & Earth’s information, we saw the opportunity to not only reflect the brand essence, but to attract a broader audience to the Sun & Earth brand through a contemporary, consumer- friendly design. We also decided to create a design that would lift the quality perception of the Sun and Earth products.”

The full case study can be found by clicking here.

So I reached out to the company and asked the question, “Would you share how you came up with the name?”  I received a response from founder Saachi Cywinski within minutes – “Our name WhiteyBoard is derived from Whiteboard, and we just added a Y. Then we thought about changing our name to AngloBoard, however we thought we may get some negative feedback if we called it that.”

So what do you think of the name WhiteyBoard? Can it pass muster in our hypersensitive politically correct world?

By the way, I ordered several of the 2′ X 3′ “Alice” versions of their product — perfect for my home office and my son’s dorm room at Caltech. Click on over to WhiteyBoard.com and order a few for yourself!

Special thanks to the San Angelo Standard Times for the article – “Go Green With Holiday Cleanup”  for the landfill statistic and practical suggestions for reducing your holiday packaging impact.

Author Update:

A quick update to this post with a special thank you to JoAnn Hines at packagingdiva.com for providing this bit of information.  Gucci offers eco-friendly packaging at their 284 flagship store locations.  According to the blog, upscaleswagger.com, “Gucci is taking the initiative to go green by implementing new eco-friendly packaging. The fashion brand wants to reduce dependence on materials and use 100% recyclable paper in packaging, so their revamping all packaging from the shopping bags to the gift boxes and even as little as to the tissue and ribbon that they use.”  Full post is here.

Are you interested in offering Eco-friendly holiday bags and gift boxes?  Check out the folks at Nashville Wraps.  They have a whole line of eco-friendly packaging called Green Way ®.

What interesting parts of your Brand history are you leaving to other outside sources such as websites, bloggers or authors?  Does your company name have an interesting origin — leave me a comment and tell us a brief story.

By the way, Starbucks was name for the character Starbuck from a Herman Melville novel, Oracle was the code name for a consulting project Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and 3M comes from the company’s original name, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.