Part of my enjoyment with this industry is the opportunity to get up on a stage and talk about it. I love the speaker circuit. I really do. I also love watching really good speakers. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is a really good speaker.

I’m fascinated with Jobs’s presentation capabilities. On occasion, I have emulated Jobs’s presentation style, like using a photo instead of copy to tell a story. When the iPad was released last week, I thought I would watch his latest presentation introducing the iPad to the world. He’s a master storyteller and takes you on a journey each time he gets on stage.

At the beginning of the presentation, he gives the audience updates on other Apple products. Apple just sold its 250 millionth iPod since 2001. Nice. The App Store has over 140,000 applications available for download to the iPhone and the iTouch, and it just recorded its three billionth download (that’s nine zeroes, folks). Very nice.

Jobs talked about Apple’s 284 retail sores, with the most recent store opening in New York City, on the upper west side.

Commenting on the newest store, he said, “It is so wonderful to be putting these stores, with their phenomenal buying experience, right in the neighborhoods  of our customers. It feels great.”

Wait. Hold up. Let’s hear that again.

“It is so wonderful to be putting these stores, with their phenomenal buying experience, right in the neighborhoods  of our customers. It feels great.”

Pregnant pause…

I wrote it down because I just had to break this sentence apart. It struck me how a CEO and regular mountain-mover like Steve Jobs can say this about an update. You would think he would save his best material for the iPad. Not for me. To me that sentence was a smack in the face, a kick in the shin, a wow moment. (Actually, that was me falling out of my chair after trying to readjust while starting to write this post. Darn you, rolling chair on hardwood floor!)

The customer experience inside a retail environment is one of the reasons for my existence This little comment was music to my ears. I wasn’t using iTunes. Shame on me. Look at the words he used in the sentence:

“It is so wonderful to be putting these stores, with their phenomenal buying experience right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels great.”

Wonderful. “Wonderful” evokes feelings of whole, positive joy, that it feels good from his head to his toes to talk about this, that he’s intimate with the new store. It’s not what Apple does, it’s what Apple is. This is not a CEO of business, this is a CEO of passion.

Phenomenal. A powerful word with more impact in this sentence than an adjective like outstanding, fantastic, or terrific. The word makes the subject feel bigger, more magical. “Phenomenal” is a word used by a CEO who believes that brand engagement with a customer or consumer is yin to the yang of high-quality products that make customers unabashedly loyal.

Experience. He knows that purchasing a product doesn’t end at the register (or the hand-held checkout). It starts when the customer walks through the doors, and ends when the product has completely served its purpose in the lifestyle of the customer many years down the road.

Neighborhoods. He didn’t say “city.” He said “neighborhoods.” That evokes a feeling of community, of local flavor, that several of your neighbors work there, and you shop there, and at any time you may find yourself sitting out front in the hot afternoon sun while recalling the old days of the Apple IIc. Brilliant.

Our. With ‘neighborhoods,’ this little word completes the sense of community, as if you may see Jobs jump behind the counter and actually start ringing up items. Using that word, instead of “the,” sells the brand strategy that you (Mr. or Mrs. Apple Product Consumer) are part of a family, not just on the other end of a transaction.

Great. He ends with a simple sentence that means two things: It feels great to drop another license to print money in New York City, and the store’s presences itself makes the entire physical and mental experience of the brand great.

And listen to the inflection and emphasis of those words. He wants to make sure you get this.

The best part of this quote is that it’s not scripted. It’s a point he wanted to make, and there’s no doubt that he has mastered the use of language as part of the presentation, but this is an update, and therefore not as scripted as the rest of the show. This was a comment. Yet it comes across with such insane passion that you can’t help but believe that this guy wanted to drop each pane of glass into place by himself. He’s really excited.

To me, this is why the cult of Apple continues to grow as a brand. Apple is a viral brand that emanates from the pores of its CEO down to the guy at the Genius Bar who can fix your MacBook Pro by just staring at it.

I have yet to watch the rest of the presentation.

There are two reasons people do digital signage: One is to get their message (or someone else’s) out there. The other is to make money doing it. And not not necessarily in that order.

It’s at this very moment where the philosophy and impact of branding comes into play. How do you make your message look and feel like…well…you? What are the proper principles of branding and how can you apply them to your company, or your message, or your existence in a given environment so that you have that crucial impact on the customer or client?

Digital Signage continues to grow, embracing principles and practices from several other areas of customer and consumer engagement. The philosophy of branding for many network operators may be a new thing because in the past there was never a real need to brand the message. A static sign in a store was just wall covering, for the most part. But, with a dynamic medium the need is greater than ever, especially for merchandisers who want to differentiate themselves and use their network as a factor of differentiation.

What is Brand Strategy Insider?
Brand Strategy Insider is the branding blog of The Blake Project, a brain trust of branding experts that “…design, manage and build brands that drive revenue through differentiated customer experiences.” Pretty much the purpose of a digital sign for many network owners and operators.

Who writes it?
The blog has several contributors: Derrick Daye (Managing Partner of The Blake Project), Martin Lindstrom, Steve Rivkin, Al Ries, and Brad VanAuken. All of them write on various topics within the brand strategy universe, and all of them write very well. Occasionally, they will disagree openly on the blog, and it makes for some fascinating reading among branding experts.

The blog also has several contributors from various disciplines that dip into the psychology of branding, advertising, and marketing, even going so far as to understand the neuroscience of marketing.

What do they write?
In VanAuken’s book, Brand Aid, he cites The American Marketing Association’s description of a brand as a ‘‘name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.” In a nutshell, they try to cover the universe of branding, taking real-life examples of brands and breaking down the reasons behind their successes or failures. The blog has over 50 categories of branding topics.

The length of each post ranges from a few hundred words to over a thousand, sometimes, and they post just about every day. It can be a challenge to keep up with all the entries. But each entry is a deep dive into the topic at hand. At the end of every article, you should feel like you learned something.

Why should I read this blog?
Because one of the most important things we can do in our industry is understand the impact that digital signage can have on an audience. With a screen’s capability for dynamic engagement, the opportunity to connect a viewer with a product or service and, particularly, with the provider of either the product or the service, the need to understand how branding functions is paramount.

Another important reason is that all of us in this industry lead or work for companies trying to be leaders in a category, whether you’re a hardware provider, creative agency, or consultant. This blog is loaded with insight on how the big companies succeed and fail with takeaways you can apply to your own organization, regardless of size.

Three To Read
Because they write every day, don’t try too hard to read everything. Instead, dig through their posts and find the articles most relevant to your discipline in the industry. They do write some about digital media, including social media, but I have found their overall marketing and branding insight to be truly valuable to me and my work.

There are literally hundreds of articles on their site, all of them great reading. Here are three posts that can give you an idea of the depth of their knowledge and experience:

The Principles of Marketing – January 14, 2010
In one post, Al Ries puts forth a great acronym to sum up the principles he practices and educated in marketing: FOCVS, “…a word using the original alphabet of the Roman Empire…” It’s a great piece of education on marketing, and I highly recommend reading this one first.

GM’s Appointment Shows No Respect for Marketing – August 19, 2009
I had put this post in an earlier Clicks post of mine. I think this is one of the best lessons in marketing you can read. It clearly shows that marketing is a discipline you acquire thorough years of marketing experience, not years of loyalty to a company.

Brand Focus Leads To Power and Profits – December 21, 2009
“…line extension inhibits the branding process. When a company makes and markets a broad range of products under one name, it is extremely difficult to build that name into a powerful brand. ” For a long time, Japanese companies like Sony have survived on a brand that connotes power and profitability. Al gives us a little reality check and helps us understand that focus can drive profits much higher.

And One More
Forgiveness and the Tiger Woods Brand – December 16, 2009
Part of the allure of the Tiger Woods debacle is the impact his personal brand has on the companies he endorses, how much money companies would lose by continuing to associate with him, and how fast some of those sponsors were to jump ship. This post is from contributor Dr. Robert Passikoff, and I found this very interesting. Two weeks after Tiger’s “transgressions” hit the airwaves, my partner, Pat Hellberg, formerly of Nike, said, “Remember Kobe’s mistake in Colorado? Nike stuck by him then. Today, Kobe’s Nike shoe is the number two best selling shoe in the world. There’s no way Nike abandons Tiger.” Sure enough, a week later Phil Knight issued a statement saying Nike would remain with Tiger.

You can follow The Blake Project on Twitter as well.

Past BUs:
Bill Gerba: Digital Signage Insider
Ken Goldberg: Broad Thinking. Narrowcasting.

Do you read a blog I should be following that is worth showcasing here? Send me a link. If I like it, I’ll write about it.

Imagine if everyone actually watched all the ads. Holy brightlightsbigcity...

As the industry matures, so too does the need to understand synergy between the screen and the viewer. It is paramount that resources be applied to understanding this synergy, discovering the challenges and exploiting the solutions. This continues to be the brass ring of out-of-home messaging.

That was a hoity-toity way of saying: Viewer engagement is difficult to achieve.