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Cognitive One Celebrates S4 Golf Tournament and Public Unveiling of Logo at Autism Awareness Event

 

Cognitive One was honored to be selected as the marketing team to create a new logo for the Swinging Fore The Spectrum charity golf tournament to benefit children and families affected by autism through the Arizona Autism Coalition.

 

Cognitive One created a logo that captured the energy of a sports brand that could be used in many additional venues and applied to golf and sports merchandise.

 

Reid Peterson, S4 tournament founder kindly stated,”We were blown away by Cognitive One and what they presented to us even in the first round of creative. They nailed it for us and the response has been very positive. We put it on the golf shirts and it was pretty impressive.”

 

About Cognitive One: Cognitive One is an interdisciplinary, innovative and uniquely skilled team that builds, hones and reinvents existing brands.  We develop and assist in financing emerging brands and management teams we believe in. We deliver tangible results that are measurable in each segment of our practice areas.

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Render-on-the-fly Personas and Branding

I was sharing great conversation in New York at the Russian Tea Room with Shane O’Neil who is the former president of RKO Group (yes, King Kong and more movies, TV stations and bottling conglomerate) and we happened to arrive at the topic of teen-aged children and their amazing ability to adapt. I thought it would form the basis of an interesting post.

 

For those of you how have tracked my spontaneous “coinage” of new phrases and concepts, I thought of a new one just then: render-on-the-fly personas.

 

GenX-ers and GenY-ers are an enigma, in that they adopt behaviors at lighting speed—they text, email and transfer social behaviors faster that ever imaginable for marketers. We all know that technology is the enabler of this bundle, but how does it occur and can you distill it and bottle it (that one’s for Shane) into a concept other than just an X or Y?

 

I think that video games and instant messaging/communication have facilitated a new psychographic, a deeper concept than just a demographic, that has given rise to the ability for individuals to literally render-on-the-fly their lifestyle and how they build their world of relevance.

 

Video games are now delivering render-on-the-fly graphics with amazing quality and at speeds that deliver results as close to reality as possible. Have you played a game on an iPhone? A dimensional experience in the palm of your hand is what you get. (See my interview on trends for 2008 for my predictions about the iPhone that have come true). The Wii, Sony and XBox platforms are all delivering immediate, interactive and community-based experiences.  More than 10 million people are registered users of www.worldofwarcraft.com and have created the largest render-on-the-fly user base in the world.

 

In political parallels, Barack Hussein Obama has, in many ways, become a master of forming a powerful and believable render-on-the-fly personality.  In fact, his meteoric rise to political power from Chicago to Washington D. C. has been at nothing less than at render-on-the-fly speed in comparison to traditional political evolution.  In many ways, Barack Hussein Obama was able to render-on-the-fly a persona that transcends modern political convention and matched a render-on-the-fly generation’s thirst for personification of a candidate more than substance of person of reality.  My opinion is that today’s media was an accelerant to his render-on-the-fly transformation.

 

Think about render-on-the-fly branding. Can we learn anything from the render-on-the-fly concepts I’ve posted today? What are your thoughts on a new render-on-the-fly persona and what does it mean to your business?

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Dr. Fran Pirozzolo’s Approach to Mental Toughness Featured in The Wall Street Journal

November 6, 2010 Scottsdale, AZ- Transformational leadership is an underpinning of the Cognitive One approach when it comes to engaging clients in a process that builds and strengthens their core. Dr. Fran Pirozzolo’s approach has always been to work quietly in the background while leading transformational changes during his three decades as a psychologist and trusted confidant that has shaped mental toughness in athletes, astronauts and politicians.


Fran was profiled today by John Paul Newport of The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled Getting Tough in Golf and Baseball: The World Series Over, Rangers Mental Skills Coach Fran Pirozzolo Turns to His Other Pupils.

Congratulations, Fran. You’re not one to enjoy the limelight, but sometimes it seems unavoidable.


Cognitive One Team

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Tiger’s Train Wreck and How It Could Have Been Avoided

The whole thing about Tiger Wood’s story isn’t the infidelity with sex. It’s really the infidelity with truth, the mishandling of a great American treasure, and the unbridled arrogance of public relations handlers that underestimate the intelligence and savvy of the public.

Unfortunately, we watched a train wreck on Friday. More unfortunate is that it was avoidable – if only he used his moral and public relations GPS. Tiger had a window slammed shut on Thanksgiving Day, 2009. He hid. It was a total failure to understand the magnitude of the pending abject destruction of his reputation and the risk of loss of his legacy. Yes, even his children will pay for the domino effect of mistakes. Michael Jackson’s children have a story that will unfurl in the future. Tiger needlessly brought his back into the fight today as part of the one-man pity party.

Tiger had a window, albeit small, to neutralize the issue. He was mismanaged and told to wait. And in an uncanny parallel to our national debt, the reluctance to admit we’ve failed to elect leaders that can lead, and the sobering reality that China has exceeded our position as the global compass, so too has Tiger Woods fallen victim to our Pollyanna-glass expectation that our sports saviors are perfect. Alas, he has fallen. The global hybrid perfection myth has been pierced. Tiger now falls to the same weak and weary standard as Kobe Bryant, Prince Charles of England with his dalliances, and even Hollywood icon Mel Gibson; all failures of faith, moral turpitude and current values worthy of print.

It could have been different. Several investors, large corporate sponsors and observers asked me what I would have recommended. The answer would have made a pin drop. I told them that Tiger should have made a statement to shock the world – tell the truth…and fast. Admit failure in front of all cameras and reporters the next day; scratches, fat lip and all. Answer all questions until the last word has been uttered and the last flash bulb has fired. Execute the lost art of the take-away. Take all questions and news, conjecture and myth away. Absorb all the bullets at one time and leave nothing left to talk about tomorrow – then off to rehab to be fixed. Imagine a one-day PR cycle where the press has to say nothing tomorrow. This didn’t happen, mostly because we have PR hacks as advocates handling Tiger that have well exceeded their high school yearbook expectations.

Yes, call me a cynic, but I expected that professional handlers would have seen it clearly as a firefight. Put it out fast. Dump it all fast. Douse the flames; look like a hero. Instead, not much happened and we all saw the embers re-ignite on Friday, fanned by the flames of a horrific PR mishandling.

At first, Tiger and his handler denied the fire existed—even started. Then the flames appeared—more than one, and several. Now today, we witnessed the volunteer firefighting station claim, “we saved the foundation!” Appall. What a sad failure. Standing in front of camera(s) that shown a light through a lightless and wandering soul, we saw the calculated hunter, the conqueror, and the consumer of raw meat—Tiger Woods, who is now obviously in denial, claim that he will be a better vegetarian when rehabilitated. Hide the carrots.

His disingenuous story of cravings and subduing the impulse of flesh is ridiculous. He is a man. Admit it and we would forgive. Blame it on wandering from Buddhism shows more weakness and a failure to accept the blame for his actions. Even more, if he were following Christian beliefs as part of his “commitment” to marriage, then he passively indicted Christianity for failing him. Please. Step up—maybe 12 steps before you touch a microphone again. Today you were a fool. No 310-yard drive can save you from this hook from the tee.

That the cameras failed during his statement was poetic justice to his perfect swing and the perfect 32-foot putt to win a tournament. It was the perfect/imperfect finish to a failed PR campaign that was misguided like a hook from the first tee. It’s the turn of the second round of life’s tournament for him. Now Tiger has to scramble out of this disaster for a respectable finish on Sunday (church aside). Let’s hope he doesn’t wear red. Maybe a scarlet T is too harsh, but he has to be a real human for us to believe in Superman. That was the lesson for us all today; that Superman could love Lois Lane for her faults and that she could adore him for his, and that we admired both of them for their moral centers and character flaws that made it a wonderful tale. We all lost a hero today. Lois would shun Tiger today. So should we until he is transparent, real and understands that he has followed the wrong path, in far more ways than just sexual indiscretions. And then we can stop watching this slow-motion train wreck come to a painful and grinding (no pun intended) halt.

–Mark Cain