One must contemplate the distinction between branding and rebranding. Rebranding is often miscast as an exercise in repairing one’s reputation. Some rebranding efforts focus on mitigating a negative image (such as Philip Morris’s name change to Altria or AIG’s move of their advisory business to Sagepoint). Yet rebranding may also represent subtle changes in positioning, or the recasting of visual identify, such as Starbucks recent move to a more contemporary look.

If you’re thinking about rebranding your company, bear in the mind the following considerations:

Seek out simplification-Today’s rebranding efforts are often a function of providing clarity to the marketplace and removing brand confusion. Citi’s recent rebranding removed a single word (if the word bank is in your name, it may not be a bad idea to remove it). Our cluttered market values simplicity.

Leverage Social Media from the ground up- Within our firm, we recently rebuilt our website, refreshed our brand, and printed new business cards (including a QR code). All of our marketing includes embedded social media components, with the intent of driving traffic to our website where prospects can experience various multimedia tools that are featured online.

Use emotional triggers-Google famous Parisian Love ad (when an American finds love in Paris) is a classic example of using emotional messaging to capture the imagination of your audience. All marketing should utilize emotional triggers.

Enter new markets- Pabst Blue Ribbon, perceived as an also-ran in the U.S. rebranded in China as an ultra-premium American lager (PBR) and is selling for upwards of $44 a bottle (the Chinese may not have everything figured out).

Reshape perceptions about quality-Rebranding should not appear cosmetic or contrived. Harley Davidson’s slide in perceived quality in the 80’s was magnified by stiff competition from Japanese competitors.  The company’s drastic repositioning included a return to its core products and the formation of the Harley Owners Group (HOG’s),  which reestablished Harley a bad boy brand.

Identify unmet needs- Your offer may need to change as the utility of your product or the benefits that differentiate it may shift over time.  Marketers will often use a tag line when they wish to preserve their brand equity, and point out new features or benefits.

Use professionals- Rebranding can back fire when companies draw attention to their marketing.  Many smaller companies try to utilize self service template web sites and similar home grown tools that come off as……home grown. Marketing requires constant investment. Hire people who can assist you with both messaging and technology.

Understand the hard and soft costs- Change can be expensive, given the need to reprint, re-sign, change email addresses, etc. Consider all your hard and soft costs (including management team band) with as you refresh your brand.

Organizations often under appreciate the importance of branding. In this world of hyper-competition, the way you communicate the nuances of your brand are more important than ever.

I believe this is a defining moment in our history. Our nation is in a fight for its soul. What kind of country do we want to be? I think we are the nation that takes care of its own.

Twelve percent of the 240,000 American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unemployed. Thirty percent of those under 24 are jobless, double the national average [i].  This is a national tragedy of epic proportions and those reading this post are the ones who can do something about it.

We can’t begin to repay veterans for the years they served for the country, the friends and family they have lost, or the sleep lost over the horrors of war.

But we can give them a chance to have a life when they come home.

Every company in America who is hiring should put veterans at the front of the line.

Hiring a veteran is a gift, not for them (they have earned the right to work) but for us. We should hire them because:

• Veterans make great employees: loyal, trustworthy, disciplined, hard working and tough.

• The Hire Heroes Act of 2011, passed last month (517-0 in Congress) provides up to $5,600 in tax credits to employers who hire a veteran

• Veterans provide inspiration to other employees, and send a message about what kind of employer you want to be

• Hiring war heroes helps drive home corporate values and messaging that resonates with customers, investors , vendors and the communities we serve

• Veterans are capable, many having mastered transferable technical skills

As the last American soldiers return from Iraq this week, we should take pause. As we celebrate our family, friends and faith, we should be thinking about those who have sacrificed so much, and have been received so little.

Most of us entrepreneurs have been the benefactors of American freedom, and it is time for us to show our appreciation.

Below are a set of resources for searching for qualified veterans:

http://www.vetjobs.com/

http://www.militaryhire.com/?gclid=CMT4ksjyia0CFQg1hwodswjGmg

http://www.hireveterans.com/

http://blogs.payscale.com/compensation/2010/01/tips-for-employers-hiring-veterans.html

As evidenced during the Arab Spring, and earthquake in Japan, we are often unable to recognize the magnitude of events as they unfold. Such could be true of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  Are world-wide protests an indicator of momentum into a global revolution of the people, or will it fizzle into a clash between local police and a group of poorly organized discontents? What effect will all of this have on the business climate?

Many remain skeptical. One analyst said that a friend of hers had mused that she could, “smell them through the TV.”

Yet this is no ordinary protest, and to dismiss “the movement” on its face would seem shallow and naive. Regardless of ones political leanings, we must all be conscious that the movement on Wall Street has struck a nerve on Main Street. It is clear there is a faction within America who believes that significant reforms are required, and they believe they represent 99% of Americans.  It is hard to know if Wall Street CEO’s are paying much attention, but  one must assume that legislators are watching the 6 o’clock news with some discomfort.

The most direct effect will be the influence all of this has on the Presidential election, not only in terms of the selection for President, but of the agenda, which will define his term. Seemingly, the protestors will embolden those who seek higher taxes on the rich and broader controls and regulations.  The inability for the Republican Party to provide a clear front-runner, with a populace message could only further the left’s ambitions to reallocate American wealth.

Regardless of the winner, it would appear that laissez-faire capitalism is the institution under greatest attack. There seems to be a belief that the corporation itself is an instrument for evil.  A tentacle of the movement seems to be that government should legislate or guarantee employment, a concept with deep implications for labor law, unions, and taxation.

In the year ahead, the executive branch will continue to drive on tighter regulation. While there are streams of regulations under review, some of the most noted include[i]:

• Stricter interpretation by the IRS on expenses related to meals and entertainment, and a new tax on self insured health plans.
• A revamp of the SEC, including greater oversight of “broker/dealers”.
• Labor Dept. enforcement on the use of “contractors” and more restrictions on the use of minors on farms.
• Environmental controls on “fracking” and similar activities.
• The revamp of Medicare by the “deficit panel, including the potential of extending the Medicare eligibility age.
• New rules by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that crack down on discrimination against disabled workers.
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration focus on violence in the work place and protections required in “high risk” work settings.
• A push by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for new rules on banks offering high-interest direct deposit loans.

The spread of protests in Europe is of particular concern, as the degradation of fragile economies there could provide fuel to the fire.  Those feisty Europeans are not new to protest, and their governments are not immune to violence. One thing that is hard to reconcile is that governments (such as Greece) are completely broke, yet their residents seem to expect a preservation of services, a zero sum game for all.  The failure of banks in Europe poses a much greater threat than in the U.S. It is a situation ripening quickly.

The fact that tax rates will escalate for the wealthy is somewhat inevitable. The President is calling for an unfathomable increase in corporate tax rates to boot.  Let us hope that such impetus does not create much in the way of immediate stress on the U.S. economy in the short term.

Batten down the hatches; it could be a long winter.

I will ask that you all oblige me this week as I am going a bit off script with a post that is highly personal.

I live in Santa Clarita, a sleepy suburb of Los Angeles. My friends in the city mock our little enclave of 175,000, because it seems so remote, and vanilla. While our little community may be light on clubs and tattoo parlors, it is rich in something else…soul.

Last week we learned we lost one of our own;  U.S. Army Spc. Rudy A. Costa was killed in Afghanistan. He was 19.  He is not the first from our village to give his life to his country. And like the other times, the community celebrated his life. 5,000 lined a packed funeral procession, children adorning hand written signs and holding miniature American flags.  800 packed into a little church with hundreds more watching on televisions outside. Stoic soldiers from past wars openly wept.

I want to live in a place where I know my neighbors, and they know me. The business community here is so tight knit that you can’t go to a restaurant or a business function and not see droves of people you know. That is the way it should be.

There are times that we need to take a minute and remember that our business colleagues and our employees all want to be part of something bigger than they are. Last week I took note that some employers in town sent their employees to honor their lost hero. Those are some business people with perspective.

We are also reminded that there are things we should believe in above and beyond making a profit. We need to send a message to others that we value our community, and we need to make investments within it.

Unknown to most Americans, professional golfer Ryo Ishikawa is also 19, not even old enough to order a cocktail. But this young man of uncommon maturity understands his community.  In an unprecedented gesture, he has pledged his entire earnings for 2011 to the relief effort in his native country, Japan…every nickel!

I am going to be rooting for Ryo this year (I don’t even know how to pronounce that, but I am going to learn). And of course I will be thinking about Rudy Costa and his family. Support your community. You will get your investment back in spades.

The protesters marched on the highway, despondent about rapid inflation.  They shut down the thoroughfare for hours. 1000 miles away, protesters flocked the capital and drove the legislators to safe haven in neighboring territories.

These were fundamentalists in Tunisia or Libya; they were students in California and state workers in Wisconsin.

The impetus for civil unrest in the Middle East is that of the “lost generation” of unemployed misdirected youth.  In some regions of the world, unemployment is 40% or more.  In the U.S. , it is not just the young that face underemployment but generations of workers whose skills have become irrelevant.  The U.S. has the western world’s widest income distribution. The Top 10% make 6 times that of the bottom 10%, compared to 4.2 X for Great Britain and 2.8 X for Sweden[i].  The labor market has hollowed, as wages earned by shop floor workers have actually declined (when adjusted for inflation) over the last two decades.

The labor imbalance in the U.S. has far reaching implications, not only for the unemployed but for our economy as a whole.  The inability of low wage earners to consume is a strain on U.S. growth.

While there is plenty of banter about the need for jobs, there is no systematic solution in place for retraining American workers such as displaced auto and steel workers. President Obama has called on U.S. business leaders to: “generate ideas for creating jobs, sustaining the economic recovery and making America more competitive”[ii].

Of course the notion of “creating jobs” is a little too convenient. Jobs are created when there is a need for them, and Americans get the jobs when they offer the most value. The problem is not that there are not enough jobs; it is that the cost-benefit for the employer often tips towards off-shoring.  If our workers do not offer enough value in the form of specialized knowledge, ability to use technology, etc., jobs will continue to be shipped overseas.

This is not a protectionist rant, and my comments aren’t intended to incite a riot on free trade, or China manipulating currency, etc. I am focused on what we can control.  What our nation needs is a retraining effort. The money we are spending on unemployment and other services would be better spent invested in people so that they can acquire new skill sets that are relevant in an ever changing world.

The question is who will lead, and who will pick up the bill?  To prepare our workers for the future will require collaboration across business and government. Tax and other incentives need to be in place to encourage the retooling of America. So as GE Chairman Jeffery Immelt and the rest of the White House Council of Economic Affairs weighs in on jobs, I hope they emphasize that we need to create opportunities for workers, and provide them will the skill sets required to compete.

Otherwise, the marches may extend to Washington D.C. and a state capital near you.

[ii] Obama wants business world’s best ideas on jobs USA Today

At the current rate of job growth, it would take 20 years to return to the level of employment before the downturn[i].  Over 2% of Americans have been out of work for a year or more, and with the gradual elimination of their unemployment benefits, their future looks bleak. It is believed that another 10% of the U.S. workforce is “underemployed”, surviving on part time work, and under the table side jobs. Unlike past recessions, it is not only the factory workers and retail employees who have been cut back, vast numbers of white collar (skilled) people, find themselves seemingly unvalued. What a tragedy.

Things are not much easier for the fully employed. They have been bludgeoned over the last two years, as their salaries, overtime, and pensions have been cut. A recent study revealed that amongst employers, “work life balance” slid from 4^th to 16^th in a ranking of employer workforce priorities. Measuring workforce performance rose from 9^th to 4^th (don’t ask me how it was ever 9^th) reflected the move to more bottom line business results. American employers have a bit of a hangover, as 28% predict further salary reductions and 52% expect lower retirement plan contributions to continue. [ii]

As the promise of lower costs is now flowing through to the bottom line, many business owners are returning to prosperity.  We all need to be mindful of the sacrifices made by our employees. Lost in the health care debate is the fact that health care inflation is rising twice as fast as wages. It has been a two year grind, and people who have not taken vacations and are fighting pay check to pay check are becoming physically and emotionally exhausted.

At the very least, employers should consider reinstating lost benefits and being more proactive in completing performance reviews and the like. Just because business is sluggish is not a good reason to stop giving feedback and honoring the work of people who have given themselves to their employers.

In fact, if your business has only posted modest results, the very best thing you can do is to communicate with employees. They know business is bad, and their fear is often worse than the reality.  Exuding confidence is extremely important, and asking for employees to participate in the success of a company creates unity and teamwork. As business improves, sharing the fruits of your labor with the people who got you there is just good business.

[ii] New Priorities for Employers-Bloomberg Business week September 13^th, 2010

In Intended Consequences, I illustrated how our economy had endured a period of unparalleled turbulence. From Y2K to 9/11, the wars in Iran and Afghanistan, the Asian Financial Crisis, Katrina, Mad Cow and Enron/WorldCom we have experienced a decade of volatility. Recent history has presented the Gulf spill, the Haiti and Chile disasters, and now civil unrest in the Middle East. Volatility has become the norm.

The violence in Egypt is particularly daunting because we don’t have a sense of the extent to which the unrest will spread to other nations in the region. Even the White House seemed surprised as stories spread of the President watching television like the rest of us, trying to make sense of it all.

The passage of time has only magnified the “strategy paradox”. How can an organization plan for a future that is impossible to predict?  I believe that in the face of such uncertainty there is a compelling need for more examination, reflection and planning.  Uncertainty should prompt us to think more provocatively about how changes in our environment will manifest within our businesses and our society (one lesson we learned from protests in Egypt is that social networking is not only a tool, but a potential weapon).

Raw materials continue to be unstable, as prices from oil to cotton have moved sharply higher.  If you were a business dependent on such materials, you may need to rethink your pricing strategy, positioning, marketing, etc. in an effort to weather the storm, or perhaps take advantage of new opportunities (to raise prices for example).

One of the ironies of global events is that we cannot comprehend their severity in midstream. When we initially heard of the first plane striking the World Trade Center, we didn’t understand the implications. It was only after time that the terrorist plot and its affect on the world crystallized for us.

So as the events in the Middle East unfold, we must be more thoughtful about what might change. Will civil unrest further American interests or de-stabilize the region? What will be the affect on the stock market, currency markets, energy prices and raw material costs?  How might the U.S. and its allies react?

Only time will tell.

A federal judge’s recent ruling that elements of the health care bill are unconstitutional has heightened the health care debate.  Republicans, feeling their oats and perceiving a mandate are threatening to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

It was only after my friend and colleague Dr. Bala Chandrasekhar explained most of the information in this post to me that I first came to understand the fundamental problem.  Our medical community suffers from perverse incentives. The system does not reward results; it rewards the extension of care.

In the world’s best hospitals, such as the Mayo Clinic, physicians collaborate, in a finite space, where information is shared and decisions are made. In the overwhelming majority of cases, patients are shuttled around, from general practitioners, to specialist, and from one laboratory to the next.  Information about the patient’s medical history is rarely shared, an approach that does not support the best medical outcome for patients.

The advent of electronic medical records and new rules governing payments is the impetus to consolidation in a business so unsophisticated, that many medical files and prescriptions are managed with a piece of paper, pen and fax machine.  The institution of medicine needs to undergo radical change, and the prospects of larger organizations managing our care means that the stakes are getting higher.

Unlike professionally managed businesses, there are massive variations in best practices in medical groups.  Physicians hate oversight, and we pay the price in an estimated 100,000 people a year dying in U.S. hospitals from pure negligence (errors).

It is intuitive to all of us that raising medical care costs are unsustainable, yet the numbers are daunting.  The convergence of an aging populace and exponential health care inflation will double Medicare costs within a decade.  By 2020, Medicare and Medicaid are projected to increase from 21% to over 30% of federal spending (non-interest payments), and that doesn’t include massive spending by state and local governments. Proponents argue that we have the best medical care in the world; but at what cost? A knee replacement that costs upward of $40,000 in the U.S., costs $5,000 in Germany. We all want the best health care, but at some point common sense must prevail.

According to the bipartisan congressional report -Restoring America’s Future, “slowing the growth of health spending is realistic. Other advanced countries have substantially lower health spending as a share of GDP, while still achieving measures of access and quality that often exceed those in the United States. Although a uniquely American approach is required, these comparisons show what is achievable.” Health care reform focuses on capping costs for doctors and reforming various forms of insurance coverage (including universal coverage). It does little to reform the underlying behavioral issues that are driving up health care costs.  The fee for service model is dated and irrelevant.

If these costs are not constrained, our fiscal mess will get much worse, and our businesses and personal wealth will be drained by massive tax increases.  Small business owners, who bear the brunt of a bloated health care bureaucracy in the form of inflated health insurance premiums must advocate for more meaningful reforms.  Our economic future depends on it.