Original impulse and great people

Original impulse, go for.
Does your product come from an original impulse, with a sincere effort to create and offer something new? Or is it a knee-jerk reaction and a copy of a rival’s product to get a slice of market share? If you connect with the latter, then drop everything right now. Go to a nearby lake, give yourself a few hours of peace and quiet, and rethink why you are in the business at all.
A hurried, half-baked approach to any project shows in the strength of the final product. Is copying others really strengthening our brand, or weakening it? Actually, it is only making the other’s brand stronger.

First, study the target audience, understand user behavior, see what you can create that others cannot, and then create a market for it. Only then do we get down to designing anything. If you want your material to have a decent shelf life, or to increase brand connect and recall, look at your own product from the perspective of the people you are selling to. Now, do you want to buy it?
These questions need to be answered before we put in precious resources into any project. Else you get a ton of ‘I told you so’s from random strangers when the product fails.

Awesome people or big brand?
We were speaking with a vendor for branded gifts, who started with bragging about his connections and companies he had delivered branded gifts for. He spoke about one particular client who had worked in several companies. Since he stayed in touch with this client throughout, he also continued as the gifts vendor to all these companies. What’s interesting was, he doesn’t even remember the logos he printed on those gifts.
So who’s bigger here- the person or the brand? True, we all want to work with great brands, but so do a lot of average people. We all know that people quit ‘great brands’ because of incompatibility with their bosses. So what is the stickiness factor? It’s the awesome people you work with.

Between people and the brand, it boils down to the people, who make the brand greater.

No technology please, we’re great people. 
In the good old 90s, there was very little technology, and more people connect. We worked much harder, sincerely and with least distractions. Today, all we care about is our designations, status messages, our phones’ operating systems. So what are we missing? Well, its original impulse and great people. To start with, keep your ego below knee level, do some great work, and respect others by giving them credit.