Updated: 12/30/2011 @ 7:15 AM EST

Cupertino, Calif. – December 29, 2011- Apple pulled iTether App because it burdens a carrier’s network. Are they talking about AT&T? If Apple is not looking out for their iPhone customers nor application developers who is? What Apple seems to be doing here is simply shoving a big AT&T stick up your you-know-what by not allowing iPhone users to download iTether ($15) as of 12 PM EST on December 29, 2011. The app, iTether, which was developed by tether.com allows iPhone users to have full Internet access on their laptop anywhere using their iPhone’s data plan without WiFi hotspots or extra data plans.

Here is the comment from Tether.com’s blog

According to Apple, users who purchase iTether before it was pulled will continue to be able to use the product.

Who got screwed here? Just follow the money and here is what happens if the iPhone app is downloaded and used by an AT&T iPhone customer.

The developer makes $15 minus fees from Apple for each app sold.
AT&T however will lost $30 each month for each customer using the app.
Consumers pay $15 for iTether and have the ability to stick that $30 each month up AT&T’s you-know-where. Priceless!!

What can we, the little people do? Post and share this article on your wall. Tweet it. Retweet it. Send an email and ask Apple to do right thing.

To the iTether developer; repackage the app and call it FUATT and I will pay $30 for it.

Any suggestions? Use #FUATTTethering hash tag when you tweet or retweet.

To learn more about iTether App visit http://www.tether.com
Tether.com’s blog http://tether.com/apple-pulls-itether
iTether YouTube video
Top ten reasons why you should use the App http://tether.com/downloads/Tether-Top10.pdf

To learn more about Apple visit Apple.com
To learn more about AT&T visit AT&T.com

I, Patrick Phonsakkhwa, do not use iTether app nor AT&T tethering service. Just an upset Apple and AT&T customer.

Brand management overview

Brand management process starts with a deep understanding of consumer and competitor.  It is very important to establish a common brand management vocabulary in your organization.

This will help your employees, clients, consumers, vendors, partners and other organizations communicate with fewer misunderstandings and more important, it will help communicate and reinforce key brand management principles. By agree on one set of terms will help organize and simplify the brand architecture.

What is Brand?

The American Marketing Association describes a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from their competition”.

Design your Brand

In designing your brand, there are four elements that I focus on.

• Target Audience : Define your target customer ( example : Target audience of CleanEn, Inc. is People who are concerned about clean air and energy conservation mostly single Male age from 20 to 35 y/o with annual income starting from $22,000 to $120,000 and single Female age 25 to 37 y/o with annual income starting from $19,000 to $100,000.
• Brand Essence : Articulate the “heart and soul” of the brand – Brand’s fundamental nature or quality. Usually stated in two to three words. In a rare circumstance brand essence and slogan will be the same. Brand Essence and also be called “Brand mantra”.  Brand mantra define the type of business and sent your brand boundaries.  Brand mantra also clarity what is unique about your brand.  It should be easy to remember, short, crisp and vivid in meaning.  Brand mantra would also stake out ground that is personally meaningful and relevant to as many employees as possible.
• Brand Promise : Develop the relevant differentiating benefits the brand promises to deliver to its target audience.  To be successfully positioned in the market place, a brand must promise differentiated benefits that are relevant and compelling to the consumer.  The benefits can be functional, experiential, emotional or self-expressive. To be believable, brand promise must have reasons to believe in support of the band’s promise.A brand promise must :
  1. Address important consumer needs
  2. Leverage your organization’s strengths
  3. Give your competitive advantage through differentiation
  4. Inspire, energize, and mobilize your people
  5. Drive every organizational decision, system, action and process
  6. Manifest itself in your organization’s products and services
• Brand Personality : Describe the brand as if it were a person (such as fun, sexy, sincere, sophisticated, old fashioned, reliable, progressive, etc)

After addressing these four elements, you need to map out how your brand is positioned against competitors.  Once the brand is designed, this design must drive all of your consumer communication, all your marketing elements, and your company persona, its design and more importantly your culture.  Also the brand must drive customer value chain – this process add value to your organization and your target audiences and consumers through activity your company or organization undertake.  If it does not, it should be reevaluated or possibly eliminated.

The brand design should be directly translated into and supported by the brand identity standard and systems.  The will make sure that the brand design noticed at each point of contact with consumer, that is resulting in a total brand experience.  In essence, you are selling the band experience more than anything else.

Managing your Brand

Here are some of the most important tasks of a brand management function

• Develop and execute brand plans, including brand marketing plans
• Build brand awareness
• Position the brand for sustainable competitive advantage
• Transform the organization’s leadership team into brand champions
• Transform all employees into brand champions
• Measure and actively manage your brand’s equity
• Actively manage the brand’s identity, including enforcement of its guidelines and standards
• Legally protect the brand
• Always keep the brand customer focused
• Design and implement and plans to create emotional connection between your brand and its customers
• Develop and execute brand loyalty programs

To find out how I can help you with your brand please contact me at jp@idealpad.com

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Idealpad was asked to donate our time and create a logo for a local business listing for Silicon Valley Pink Page.  The result is as follow.

Final logo.……………………………..Other concept

URL : Facebook Pink Pages

Jitana is an online Natural Authentic Thai Cuisine with many products; such as Thai Red Curry, Thai Yellow Curry, Thai Green Curry and more.  We were asked to create product labels for their line of ready to use curry sauces.  Below are the results.