IT’S A TMI WORLD.
The amount of content created by the human race from the begining of time until the year 2003 is now being created in equal or greater amount every 48 hours. Everyone is competing for every one else’s attention all the time. TMI: TOO MUCH INFORMATION.
If you don’t stand out, you fail.
BLINK
Research has shown that when we see something – a book cover, a website, a logo, a business card, a person, it takes us 1/25th of a second to form an opinion about what we are seeing. It happens so fast we are usually not aware of it until some time later, if at all. But we react – either positively or negatively. It happens, literally, in the blink of an eye.
For those interested in more on this subject, read the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.
BRANDING
Branding is the process of creating a unique name and an image in the minds of others. For some it may be a sound or an idea, but for most of us it is visual. It is the way our book covers or websites or business cards look. It is the way we ourselves look on stage or in front of a camera or in a meeting.
Good branding gives us credibility, it is a vital part of professionalism, it is what we want to present ourselves to the world as. It doesn’t have to be spectacular or glitzy. What it does most importantly, its purpose, is make us memorable.
DO A LITTLE EXCERCISE
Take a stack of business cards, read through the back pages of a magazine or newspaper and look at the ads, or while you’re driving down the highway, study the billboards. Now go and do something else and divert your attention. After 10 minutes, try to remember what you looked at. The one or two that stand out – the ones you remember – are the people or companies most likely to succeed. Now try to figure out what it was you saw that made them memorable.
