Our clients—mostly corporations—typically come to us because they want to create or strengthen relationships. They may have problems or challenges they want to overcome, or see opportunities they hope to capitalize on through strategic brand communication. Our job? To learn as much as we can about them, and to develop and implement solutions designed to help them achieve their specific goals.

When everyone's Airbus A300s (or mobile phones, SUVs, software, sports drinks, accounting services, data plans etc.) and prices are essentially the same as those of their competitors, how do we decide where to put our dollars? We make decisions based on our perceptions of the candidates and then we vote with our wallets. That’s brand power.

Sure, we all need to know a lot about what we do to do it well, so ongoing, focused learning is a must. But if we're open, pay attention, and think beyond our own horizons, there can also be tremendous value in boldly going where we have no clue.

My ‘formative years’, as they say, were the 60s and 70s. And that’s why I became a graphic designer.

Whatever new ventures you're embarking upon, whatever opportunities you’re considering for personal and professional growth, whatever resolutions and milestones you’re committing yourselves to, even if they make your stomach turn, if you give them your all and finish the job, victory is yours.

So you’ve got good cars. Good airplanes. Good hotel rooms. Good software. Good design. Good food. Good whatever. What else have you got?

It’s not out of the ordinary to meet prospective clients who'll spend an hour or so outlining the totally unique qualities / challenges / opportunities their organizations represent, only to finally ask if my team and I have ever solved their exact problem for another client just like them in their specific industry.

OK, restaurant with the awesome sign. You've got my attention, and I'm thinking I might just act on the curiosity you've created. You want to create brand loyalty? Just remember that while it's true I may 'need' food, we both know there are plenty of options. And we both know that our first experience together can go one of three ways—good, bad, or whatever—and that in business, two of those results are negative.

If you subscribe to the measurement maxim—that an organization should focus only on what it can accurately measure—you might think that committing resources to stuff with hard to pin down or fuzzy ROI is incredibly risky. The most innovative (and financially successful) companies you can think of might argue exactly the opposite.

For brands, authenticity is huge. Trust is huge. Violating trust not only makes you look shady, but it can get you and your business in a lot of trouble, if not with the Facebook / Twitter police, then for sure with potential investors and/or actual customers or fans. Best bet? Grow your fan base the good old fashioned way.

So what does the process of raising kids have to do with the process of strategic design / brand communication?

Why go to these lengths to produce our own conference? It’s an opportunity to clue young minds in (we’ve all got kids) to the idea that they might be able to design the future instead of just living in it. It’s an opportunity to gather a whole bunch of otherwise-unconnected people together and see what might happen. And it’s an investment in our own intellectual / creative selves.

If you're not doing everything you can to put your best self out there 100% of the time, if you're not being the absolute best at whatever it is you do, offering fair value and a consistently positive experience, and if you're not communicating clearly, honestly, authentically and strategically with the people who matter the most to you, you're probably not going to matter much to them. And that means opinionomics is going to get you.

Innovation demands change. Innovation demands examining the known, finding it wanting, and then creating the previously unknown. It demands all kinds of behavior that’s contrary to the basic human instinct to cling to the ‘now’ in case the ‘whatever’s next’ is way, way worse.