BRANDENew Apples!

It's fall and apples are in season and I set out to buy 3 shiny new ones for BRANDEMiX.

In terms of Brand Equity, Apple's ranks 22 on the list of best Global Brands, and it's brand equity is up 22% over last year. The Apple brand is innovation, style and design. It's thinking out of the box.

And the Apple stores themselves are an experience worthy of the Apple logo.

Though the store was every bit as busy as you would imagine on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, the my salesperson guided me through my purchases, asking me qualifying questions such as who were the computers for and what kind of work would they be doing.

When I expressed concern integrating the new Intel-chip Macs onto my network, out came a Mac Genius. Another company might call this person a Geek or part of technical support.

But in Apple-land he is a genius and he helped alleviate my concerns. He handed me his card and told me to give him a call on Monday and let him know how it worked out.

Yes, I was buying 3 computers but there are companies buying 500 Ipods to give out to their employees. There are customers raffling 100 Iphones at the next networking conference. My purchase was not large by Apple standards yet I was given the red carpet treatment.

AND THIS RELATES TO YOU HOW?

The most significant impact Human Resources can have within their company is to support the brand, hire to the brand attributes and make sure training and development programs, performance management systems and compensation programs are designed to reinforce and promote "brand behavior."

The geniuses both in the stores and running the company know how important every person walking in the door is. Not only are they connected to the culture- the create the culture every day.

They know that my children want Mac computers because Mac makes their favorite thing- the Ipod.

Here's what InterBrand's insights on Global Branding had to say about the company:

Apple
Apple is the supreme master of Demand Creation. Consumers
are now happy to own multiple iPods that are styled for
particular functions: home, video or exercising. And in a world
filled with technology, the expectation created around the
launch of the iPhone demonstrates the supreme desirability
this brand has created. With iPhone, Apple plays a double trick
on its competitors. It transcends the problems of the highly
saturated communications environment by creating products
with such extraordinary customer pull that there’s no need to
push. At the same time, the phenomenon of the product launch
pulls free media toward it, proliferating brand impressions and
flooding media channels with branded messages. Essentially,
it has created such a profound demand that the product itself
generates a media blitz. It’s a high profile demonstration
of the convergence of technology. It was unthinkable some
years ago that Apple could make a phone. Consumers wouldn’t
have given the brand permission to do so. But now Apple
can transcend the ‘old thinking’ of limited boundaries. In this
sense the brand has become its passport, to roam wherever its
proposition can be applied.

That's the power of a brand and the power of Human Resources to take a big bite of the business strategy and get in the game.