The Sebinomics Blog 1.0

What do Steve Jobs, Ted Murphy, and Superman have in common? Answer: They can be recognize them by their outfit, which is part of their personal branding.

Steve's Outfit

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., is widely known for his great keynote presentations, which are also trademarked by his unique outfit: Levi’s 501 jeans and a St. Croix mock turtleneck. In the case of Superman, he is only super with his blue, red and yellow costume, red cape, and the stylized S on his chest. And as Ted Murphy, serial entrepreneur and CEO of IZEA, wrote in his blog post My Social Media Costume, “My hat, Twitter shirt and crazy red running shoes have all become part of my personal brand. I wear this outfit to events because it enables people to easily recognize and remember me.”

The above-mentioned outfits are made to stick and emphasize their personal brand. Not only outfits can emphasize your personal brand, but also the way you move and behave. If you are a presenter of any kind, such as a speaker, musician, entertainer, or coach, be aware of the way you move, since that can be part of your signature as well. Sting stated in a Making-of Guitar Hero, “The way you move is as much a signature as the way you sing or the way you play.” That is also true for the way we move, talk, or get excited about something. Most musicians and dancers practice in front of mirrors to analyze their movements and work on them until they look good, or cool, in the case of rock musicians. 

With the right outfit it becomes natural to behave in a certain way until it becomes a signature of the character you are promoting. Nonetheless, it is very important to stay authentic.

The New MacBook Pro

Apple just released its new MacBook and MacBook Pro, and my first thought was, “Don’t take away the greatest keyboard I have ever used!” But they did.

I understand, a company has to improve its products, try new things out, dadee dadaa, but if there is one thing I wouldn’t have wanted them to change is the keyboard. Sure, it sounds very good what Apple writes on its website, “And the keys are curved to perfectly fit fingers. The result? Pure typing bliss.” And I usually say, Never judge a gadget you haven’t played with yet. Well, too late now. Fortunately, I still got a a few older models to work with. This issue didn’t stop bugging me the entire evening, so I thought to read some comments on different sites.

Jeff Mincey commented on Macworld, “It’s all very impressive; but I’m going to miss the old MacBook Pro keyboard.” Yeah, I feel with you! On Macrumors, oldwatery wrote, “Damn those are ugly machines! All the black stuff looks like some kind of HP or Dell p.o.s. And remind me what the difference is between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.  I’m so keeping my C2D MBP17″.” Well, this was actually my second thought after seeing the new machines. The black frame reminds me of my friends HP laptop. I don’t know if it makes working with the Mac easier, but I sure don’t like it. 

HP Pavillion: Almost looks like a new Mac

Please, don’t get me wrong. I love Mac and I’ll keep using them, but this time they jeopardized to much comfort for design, and in my opinion is not even a nice design. Ever since I left Apple, I somehow felt that something is cooking and Mac customers are not as content as they used to be. Sure, sales go well, but Apple is standing at a crossroad. I just hope they don’t decide to follow Microsoft’s footsteps.

Seth Godin wrote in his October 7, 2008, blog, 

Marketers spend a lot of time describing a future and making it real. The more general you are in describing it, the farther away people imagine it is. “We’re going to launch a new product next year” sounds a lot more distant than handing someone a prototype and saying, “this launches on January 3rd at 2 pm at CES.” … If you want people to embrace your version of the future, talk about it like it’s right around the corner, not on another planet.

Good point. Nonetheless, there are companies that actually don’t talk about future products at all. Think about Apple. Apple lives from rumors about possible new products. You never know what the company is going to present next. The iPhone was the first secret they couldn’t keep. 

In a certain way, I like the idea of wrapping your product in mystery and surprise your potential customers with a big bang. On the other hand, it sucks if you’re a retail partner and don’t receive any information about, which products you might have to sell at dumping prices, because they get old overnight. And customers, might be upset if they spend €1,000 on a MacBook today when they would have gotten the new version for possibly €100 less in a week.

As Seth suggested, tell your audience when they can expect what from you, like bands do it. Take AC/DC, my all-time favorite hard rock band. Their new album Black Ice has been scheduled for October 18, 2008, in Australia and will be released worldwide two days later. Fans and music lovers everywhere are now awaiting the new album. They know when what is going to happen and they will definitely check into a music store and listen to the album as soon as it is out.

It seems as if Apple learned from the past and actually announced a presentation about notebooks on October 14, 2008. Still, as Jacqui Cheng wrote in his Ars Technica’s Apple-centric journal, ”What can we expect from this event? No one knows for sure.” I know that the spotlight turns to notebooks. Therefore, I will tune in and watch Steve Jobs‘ the presentation as soon as it is up on Youtube.

I’m not quite sure if I’ll be a fan of the new MacBooks, since I have absolutely no clue what they’re going to look like, but I’m definitely going to be a fan of AC/DC’s Black Ice album.

I have been working for Apple as a solution consultant for more than two months now and thought it would be good to know more about the company’s roots and read “iWoz” by Steve Wozniak, the guy who created the very first Apple computers. It really helped me to understand why certain things are done a certain way at Apple.

These are my favorite passages in ‘iWoz’:

“When you have an employee who says he’s tired of calculators and is really productive in computers, you should put him where he’s productive. Where he’s happy.” (p. 194)

“Hey, never pretend you can do someone’s job better than someone who’s been doing it for years.” (p. 232)

“[Most inventors] are almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them ‘are’ artists. And artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee.“ (p. 290)

“When you’re working as your own boss, making decisions about what you’re going to build and how you’re going to go about it, making trade-offs as to feature and qualities, it becomes a part of you. Like a child you love and want to support. You have huge motivation to create the best possible inventions—and you care about them with a passion you could never feel about an invention someone else ordered you to come up with. And if you don’t enjoy working on stuff for yourself—with your own money and your own resources, after work if you have to—then you definitely shouldn’t be doing it!” (p. 292)

I mostly agree with Mr Wozniak’s statements and think that every entrepreneur should think about the above-mentioned points. Mr Wozniak left Apple in 1985 because he did not fit into a corporate environment. Corporate Apple castigated his creativity, which is the worst thing for any entrepreneur. Creativity is what makes great products and ideas great. Creativity is the root of a corporation. It is not the product bringing in money; it is the idea that created the product! Therefore: Inventors of products and services, be creative! And, bosses and investors, let them be creative!