Long before you leave the front desk of Hotel Burnham in Chicago, you know you’re going to have a different experience. It’s not anything big, in fact….it’s something small. The key. Today, every hotel from a Motel 6 to a Four Seasons, uses a magnetic key card. Some are prettier than others but they all use the same technology. It’s what we expect. At Hotel Burnham, they hand you a brass key.

It’s human nature to be drawn to voices that feel familiar. Steve Lovelace from Build a Better Box has a great post about a study from the National Academy of Sciences about how infants respond to people speaking in different languages. The study suggests that even as young as five months, the infants recognize the tones and patterns of their native language and respond accordingly.

Advertising Age released their annual Garfield’s Super Bowl Review of the super bowl commercials so we thought we’d compare his opinions with our Monday Morning Quarterbacking. Our top three selections and his were considerably different. Audi “Green Police”, Chrysler “Man’s Last Stand” and Qualcomm’s Flotv ranked high on his list while Doritos “House Rules”, E-trade Babies and Snickers “Betty White”

Retail brands like Apple and Barnes & Noble get this. Just by walking into their space–you are enveloped into an experience. They begin their brand story at the front door. But B2B companies and service providers have ben much slower at recognizing the power of maximizing that first impression. At bGG, we begin our brand story from the entry to our lobby. It’s purposefully hard to miss our logo on the wall to the left, our logo color used to paint opposing walls and photography of the bGG Staff over the years adorning walls on every floor.

“Company X empowers our customers to succeed by delivering dependable and timely service,” that’s a company’s Brand Promise. What? What a disappointment. This company has a story to tell (we know so for a fact). Why is it that companies can so easily mess up a good thing by failing to tell a story? This was an organization that actually did have a story to tell. They did have a point of difference. And yet, they let corporate speak and vague banality dilute their message until it was practically non-existent.