Every fall, my wife and I trek west from Chicago to the Amana Colonies in eastern Iowa, about a three- or four-hour jaunt from our home. This year was our seventeenth year. We started in 1992.

We rendezvous in the Amana Colonies with a couple from Kansas City for a long October weekend. I went to graduate school with the husband, and my wife worked at a Dude Ranch in Colorado with the wife. The couple introduced us about 18 years ago in Denver. Through good times and bad, cancer and job loss and six kids (total), we’ve never missed a fall in eastern Iowa.

The Amana Colonies are a series of villages, originally established in the mid-1800s by German immigrants who had come to the States in the mid 1840s to avoid religious persecution. The Amana Colonies formed one of America’s longest-lived and largest religious communal societies. The community supported itself through farming and the production of wool and calico. The community also made clocks, brewed beer, and made well-crafted products. (The folks at the Amana Colonies are not like the Amish or the Hutterites, who eschew modern comforts.) You’ve probably heard of “Amana Radar Ranges” or other kitchen products; there’s a manufacturing plant in one of the Amana villages, though it is now owned by a conglomerate.

Today, the Amana Colonies is mostly for shopping and eating. My wife and the wife of my friend shop at village shops while he and I play golf, watch college football on TV at the bed-and-breakfast, or attend an Iowa Hawkeye football game in nearby Iowa City. It’s a weekend for slugs.

Over the 17 years, we’ve seen the Amana Colonies morph from a destination place with boutique shops, each with unique inventory, to what it is today: a series of generic shops all owned by the Amana Colonies corporation. That is, when we first started visiting the Colonies in the early to mid-nineties, the shops in the villages were independently owned. My wife said recently, “Each shop was unique. You never knew what you’d find; shopping was a lot of fun.”

But that all changed.

In recent years, as best I can tell, the Amana corporation may have forced out the independent shop owners by not renewing their leases. So, today you still have, for example, many of the kinds of shops that you had in the 1990s, but they all pretty much sell the same thing - what the buyer at the corporation decides is good for all the stores. The creativity is gone. The individuality is gone. The corporation came and made everything bland.

It’s hard to know if the drop in tourist visits to the Amana Colonies preceded the move to standardize the shops or is a consequence of shopping that has become generic.

But the point is still true: Corporation thinking tends to value standardization and efficiency. No doubt, there’s a place for that. But someone needs to fight for creativity, for being unique, for taking risks. That is, if your organization wants to grow.

Let’s say you work for a nondescript, middle-of-the-road airline.

I will forgive you if you don’t look up when I address you at the counter before take-off. Forgive me, though, if I roll my eyes as I turn away.

And when I ask you for the second time if you would check to see if I can move from my middle seat to an aisle or window seat—because I didn’t hear your muffled reply the first time—and you cop an attitude… I’m mostly okay with that, too. Air travelers are so high maintenance!

Once we’re in the air, you promise headsets to watch the movie on the 3-hour flight. I think the cost is $5.

A few minutes later, you say that your operations folks forgot to put the headsets on the plane and that you’ll leave the movie on even if we can’t hear it.

I grouse for a minute or two, but then I say to myself, “Well, that’s today’s airlines.”

It’s no fun being in the middle of an C-plus organization. Or being near the top of one, for that matter.

Customer service is drudgery when your brand stands for nothing. And when you are only one of an army of nondescript workers trying to earn a decent living at an average company in an industry that is on its heels.

No doubt, it’s just a job. It pays the bills, maybe provides some insurance. You hope you don’t lose it.

Most of us don’t work for Under Armour or Apple or Google or some high-flying nonprofit creating entrepreneurs in Asian villages. We work for decent organizations, but dynamic or entrepreneurial they’re not. They’re not the leader in much or of much.

So how do you do “remarkable” work at merely a slightly above average place?

Many folks think that “when I find the right organization that is really going somewhere - then I’ll give it my all.”

But the old adage is true: Your organization cannot make your self. You must bring your self to the organization. That’s especially true in a C-plus firm. A C-plus organization needs its ordinary folks to attempt to make the honor roll.

Okay, now I sound like a aging motivational speaker with too much hair gel.

Even if you’re in a moribund setting, for executives and middle managers alike, you must learn to swim upstream. A leader always swims against the current, no matter what grade your organization gets.

You can start by looking your customer in the eyes when he asks for a window seat, even if you know already that the flight is full.

There is a new SARS virus: the Serious Assumptions Regarding Slang.

I am referring to the increasing use of the word guys in businesses across America. Throughout the service industry, from restaurants to airlines to retail sales, professionals commonly address their customers as guys.

Think about the time you last entered a restaurant:

You were probably greeted with, “How are you guys this evening?”

After you were seated, a server asked, “Can I offer you guys something to drink? Would you guys like anything else?” After paying the check: “I hope you guys will come back again soon.”

True, guys feels friendly; it’s a way people attempt to warm up to their customer. The problem is customers are not friends. In time, some might become friends. But it’s presumptuous to assume that upon your first encounter. Customer service is built on respect—forged through experience and acquired over time.

Notice the difference in each of the sentences when guys disappears:

• “How are you this evening?”
• “Can I offer you something to drink?”
• “Would you like anything else?”
• “I hope you will come back again soon”

The above demonstrates professionalism, respect, and courtesy.

Sometimes the variations of guys sound silly:

For example, at the end of a meal a waitress told our party, “I’ll get you guys’s check right away.”

Is guys’s a word? It was part of our waitress’ hackneyed lexicon. The impression she left didn’t match her intentions. Impressions last. Most of us would be hesitant to go into a client’s office and announce, “I have a new product to recommend to you guys.”

Nor would we report to the board of directors, “I have an announcement you guys will like.”

The specific words we use communicate volumes to those who hear us—and those we want to build lasting relationships with. Consider what messages you want to communicate to your customer, then choose the right vocabulary.

Is “guys” necessary, helpful, appropriate?

What do you guys think?

Dr. Parkinson is professor of TV and communications at Northwestern University and co-author of Becoming a Successful Manager.

The owner is Greek, the restaurant is Italian. And it serves the best Chicago-style stuffed pizza in the Chicago area.

That’s saying something, given that there’s a pizza joint on the four corners of every major intersection. This restaurant is not a franchise. Not a carry-out-only place. And while it serves other Italian food - I don’t know that for sure, since I’ve eaten only the pizza.

To beat the rush weekend evenings, we order in. That is, my wife or I call about 40 minutes ahead and place our order. We arrive with our three kids, two of which head to a playroom with video games and other toys.

We put our name in with the host, who most often is the grumpy, squatty gray-haired owner-grandma. She barely looks up when you walk up to the podium that she peers over to take your name. We remind her that we’ve already ordered. I don’t think she smiles. She plays no favorites.

The service is slow, the waiters and waitresses are never around when you want another drink. You wait for your check. You wait for the box to take home the leftover pizza. It’s the place to go if you want to test your patience.

In short the restaurant violates pretty much every marketing principle of the last quarter century.

Yet, I suspect that the owners fit the profile of the rich folks in the best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door. The restaurant mints gold, the pizza is gold.

So I wonder what there is to take away from their success, and the only thing I can think of is this: Great pizza trumps great service. That is, if your product is really, really good, then your service can be average.

That doesn’t sound right to me, but I’m stumped.

Thoughts?

Over the past decade, I’ve digested pretty much every book and article and blog that you can imagine on the subject of branding and marketing.

I’ve also interviewed by phone or via email many best-selling authors on aforementioned topics.

I learn something new from each one.

I tend to take away more from the conversation with the author than I do reading his or her book. When you ask the author to clarify a point in the book or give a specific example, often you strip away the flabby writing from the nugget of insight. Most books should be only an article in length. But the publisher wants at least 250 pages, so authors write to fit the book-length medium.

In some marketing writing, though, there’s a common thread that annoys me:

It’s as if the authors all went to the same convention, identified all the “successful stories” and then starting writing. Here are a few of the wake-me-when-they-are-outdated marketing stories:

• Facebook (still looking to make some real money in social media);
• Google (the big dog on the block; who can argue with its success?);
• Starbucks (closing 600 stores soon; see our interview with John Moore: http://www.czmarketing.com/brand/);
• Apple (the brand with design panache);
• SalesForce.com (the clunky convenience of online CRM); and
• Kiva (the creative online micro finance nonprofit).

Before the above, there was:

• Krispy Kreme (now a not-so-hot stock);
• Dell (trying now to reinvent itself);
• Amazon (now just another boring stock); and
•Too many others to mention.

What’s hot is touted as the pinnacle of truth for marketing your organization: “Just follow the marketing principles of this hot company or you will become irrelevant and die a thousand deaths.”

No one writes those words, but that underlying schtick is occasionally assumed in the writing.

Here’s my grumpy point: Growing an organization is hard work. It’s tedious, sometimes monotonous. Not very sexy. And it takes much longer than you think. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the demographics or economics of your prospects change. Then you’re forced to regroup and make adjustments in real time.

No doubt Starbucks and Google and Apple have lots to teach the rest of the world. But it’s important to strip out the bravado from the principles and ask the real question: What, if anything, is really relevant to our situation?

Maybe the most important purpose of reading about today’s hot companies is to inspire hope. Growth is possible. Our future can be brighter than our past.

Some of the folks you really need to be listening to aren’t talking to you.

I once used a local dry cleaners for my shirts and did so for about 5 years. One day, while the owner waited on me, a young, pretty woman walked in. I was handing him my credit card to pay for my shirts when he turned and helped her. He made me wait. After 5 years of loyalty, I walked out and never returned. The dry cleaners was about a half mile out of my way, and that day he gave me a reason to leave. I never told him about how I felt. I never said good-bye. Poof! I was gone.

A friend recently was driving back from vacation on the East Coast and decided to drop in on a college that was on their son’s “maybe” list. The school made their list only because the daughter of a family friend attended the college and raved about it. A personal referral ranks high on my list as a high value prospect.

So the family popped by the campus and got the standard tour with a current student dressed in blue jeans with her hair pulled back. The family then headed back on the road. The school never contacted them. Never followed up with a phone call to the prospective student, asking, “How was your visit? What did you like? What questions do you still have?”

You wonder if the private liberal arts school had such an overabundance of smart male applicants that their lack of follow-up was a tactic to keep enrollment low.

Consequently, the school will never know why my friend’s son will not attend in Fall 2009. I’m not saying that he would have attended had the admissions folks cared what he and his parents thought. But my guess is that at the next marketing meeting, the enrollment team evaluated their plan and creative based on what they prefer or what some of the current students and faculty declare as acceptable. Most likely it reflected the cheery perspective of folks in love with their decision to attend or work at the school.

The next time you pat yourself on the back and say, “Look, these existing clients (current students, current members, etc) really like this or that,” remember this: The most important folks may not be in the room. Who will speak for them?

I spent several days near Bozeman, Montana, in mid April, and I passed on the road several glossy orange trucks with large black lettering that read “We Do Anything.” The trucks were about the size of a mid-sized U-Haul; the black lettering looked like it was painted by my 6th grader.

At first, I thought, Wow, these folks could sure use some consulting. Their strategy is too general - they do anything. That means they really do nothing. What a poor way to market your small business!

Then I began thinking about how I might use them at home in the Chicago western suburbs:

1. We have a heavy wooden swing set (which could survive a nuclear attack) that I’d like disassembled and taken to the dump.

2. We have two golden retrievers, and when I get lazy or forget to scrape up their business in the backyard, I might just give “We Do Anything” a call.

3. We have an old shed in the backyard that also needs to be torn down. Yes, I could do that. But why ruin a perfectly good weekend?

4. In the next month, I need to put a seal coating on our paved driveway. How motivated am I to do this, really?

5. I have some large limbs from trees that were blown down from last summer’s microburst that need to be cut up and taken away.

It hit me that the messaging of “We Do Anything” is not general, but very specific. It’s so specific that your mind goes immediately to the projects that you’d like completed but have wondered whom to call. My guess is that not only does “We Do Anything” land the hard jobs - they also get some projects that typically go to painters or sealcoating companies or even carpenters.

Does your brand evoke something specific in the minds of your prospects?

Several years ago on a late Saturday evening, my wife let out Cassidy, our golden retriever, into the backyard to do her business.

As part of her late-night liturgy, Cassidy scratched the door to be let back in, and when my wife opened the door, the dog flew past her into the family room. And so did a stench that burned the hairs in your nostrils. I arrived on the scene about 10 minutes later and I swear I could almost see a faint haze in the house. Cassidy had been sprayed by a skunk. In fact, as I gave the dog a bath in tomato juice and dishwashing soap 30 minutes later, I saw the stream of skunk fluid on the coat of Cassidy - a direct, close-up hit. Golden retrievers are not known for their intelligence.

By the time Jana got the dog back outside, the house had absorbed the smell. It took 2 weeks from that night for the smell to work its way out of the house, thanks mainly to lots of fresh air.

About a week into the 2-week ordeal, I awoke and sniffed and thought, “Hey, I think the smell is finally gone.” But when I returned at 6 PM later that day, after 10 hours at work, I entered our front door, greeted by skunk-smell. I suspect that even our clothes reeked of skunk for a time.

Here’s my point: The longer you’re in the house, the less you can smell the odor.

That’s also true of marketing. The longer you work at the same thing, the less you are able to see what’s not working. That’s why continuing education is so important. That’s why you outsource. That’s why you read. That’s why you hire staff with different experiences.

The attention of our prospective clients is in scarce supply these days. Arresting their attention requires that we don’t grow accustomed to the smell.

I always toy with whether to tip at coffee shops, $2 coffee already seems way too expensive.

At the local coffee shop, a “competitor” to Starbucks, the atmosphere makes up for the unbranded (but still expensive) coffee. The place has high ceilings, funky art (kind of), wood floors that need to be refinished, and a sofa that looks and feels like its previous stop was the boys dorm lounge of the local college.

Most visits, I drink plain old regular $2 coffee. In a mug. I never tip. But occasionally, I’ll splurge and request a cappuccino in a mug. I hesitate, inwardly, as I sign the debit card receipt: Should I add a tip?

My head screams no - I shouldn’t have spent this much money in the first place. My heart says, “Well, she doesn’t make much money making coffee in this ostensibly struggling small business. I bet she doesn’t get health insurance like the folks across the street at Starbucks.”

But my head always wins: The server is emotionally flat, barely grunts when I tell her my order, and never brings my foo-foo coffee to where I sit. There’s no real value to the service. The other day, about five minutes after I gave my order, the server essentially walked by the table where I was tapping away on my laptop and pointed back to the register, where my medium, frothy cappuccino sat: “Your drink is over there.” She wouldn’t bring it over, even though my table was on her way.

It ripped me that I had to get up and walk 7 paces to grab my cappuccino. Then I remembered that I didn’t tip her. I then asked myself, “Would she have brought me my cappuccino if I had tipped her?”

So, the question is, “If I’m the server, do I go the extra mile for only those people I think will tip me?” Or, do I serve everyone with the same level of service?

So much of, maybe all of, branding comes down to execution of the little things. It’s easy for pretty people in large conference rooms to wax on and off about branding. But branding comes down to the person on the front-line, who is or isn’t executing on the brand promise.

The person who answers the phone. The receptionist. The student who is leading your campus tours. The assistant who prints out your reports and sends them to the client. The person behind the counter at the cafeteria in the food court of your museum.

So does your assistant know how important his/her job is to the brand of your organization? Or, is she just doing “administration” work for $13 an hour?

I love Steve & Barry’s. I just bought two pairs of Starbury tennis shoes for my 12-year-old for $8.98 each. You get two trendy, colorful pairs of shoes that an NBA basketball star wears for work for only $19. I wanted to buy more - just because I could.

Steve & Barry’s is a recent addition to the world of sports apparel. In 2006, Steve & Barry’s recruited NBA® star Stephon Marbury to develop the Starbury™ Collection of urban-inspired apparel and footwear. The killer product is the Starbury II, a “high-performance basketball sneaker that Marbury wears on NBA® courts. The Starbury II boasts a sleek design and is engineered with the same comfort, stability, and durability found in basketball sneakers that retail between $100 and $150—and it’s just $14.98.”

That’s what Steve & Barry’s web site promised.

But I got the shoes for just $8.98. Each. Steve & Barry’s had a sale!

The Steve & Barry’s I visited was trashed. The shoe section had empty boxes strewn on the floor, mismatched shoes in boxes, 7 1/2 shoes in boxes that were marked size 10. And the clerks (who can’t be more than 19) shrugged their shoulders when I ask for help. “Yeah, it’s a mess here.” No apologies. No real anxiety.

And I wasn’t bothered by it, the prices too amazing.

Across the corridor in the mall, only 10 paces or so from Steve & Barry’s is another sports apparel store: Finish Line. It is filled with $70, $80, and $100 tennis shoes in boring colors, and other expensive sports apparel. The store was almost empty of customers when I walked by.

It must suck to be Finish Line. There’s no way you can sell your products for the same as Steve & Barrry’s. An upstart comes along and changes the rule. New companies don’t play by the same rules - ergo, that a tennis shoe has to be expensive to be fashionable. I don’t know yet whether the shoes are any good. And does that really matter?

At this point, traditional marketing itself doesn’t matter. Finish Line could spend millions trying to get customers into its store, but for what purpose? To buy boring, expensive, branded apparel? Good luck with that.

I realized that as I left Steve & Barry’s, with my 12-year-old ecstatic, that I had just experienced a “Purple Cow,” a phrase that marketer Seth Godin (www.sethgodin.com) writes and talks about. A Purple Cow is only a Purple Cow if the consumer experiences your product or mailer or service as a Purple Cow. You can’t talk your constituents or clients into thinking that what you are presenting them is exceptional. It either is or isn’t.