Birmingham Winter Fountain. Photo Credit Lee Jordan

Thanks for listening this year.  We are taking a two week break and will be back right after the New Year on January 5^th, 2011 with the answer to your burning questions about how to run a 70-member BNI chapter.

If you have questions about BNI’s new branding initiative,

• BNI members—please connect with your local Director
• BNI Directors—please connect with your BNI National Office
• BNI National Offices—please connect with BNI Headquarters

This week, Dr. Misner wants to talk about the benefits of a consistent branded look for BNI members and chapters.

• The new visual look makes it easier to explain BNI to non-BNI members.
• BNI becomes more visible and credible. The more brand recognition you have, the easier it is to bring new members into the group.
• People will no longer be confused about which groups are affiliated with BNI. This saves us from the risk of unfair negative perception.
• This will help cement BNI’s continued leadership as the world’s largest networking organization.

Links

1. Example of the New Branded Look
2. BNI Branding PowerPoint Presentation
3. The BNI® Branding Standards

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 185 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, and I am up in Big Bear Lake, California this week working with my co-authors on one of my upcoming books. I think we talked about it on a podcast before. The title of it will be Business Networking and Sex- Not What You Think. It’s about the difference between men and women and how they network.
We’re hiding away after this podcast, and we will be spending four or five days working together to help move this book along. It needs to be completed in the next three to four months for a release in early 2012.

Priscilla:
Sounds great.

Ivan:
So today am talking about the benefits of BNI’s new branded look. Last week we talked about why we did it and there is something I left out of last week’s podcast that I want to start this one with. That is what if you have questions about BNI’s new branded look? If you are a BNI member or team leader, please connect with your local BNI Director. Very important. If you have any questions about branding, please connect with them. If you’re a BNI Director who is listening to this podcast, please connect with your BNI National Office. If you are a BNI Director- Assistant, Area, Executive, or Regional Director- please connect with your BNI National Office. National Offices, if you are listening to this podcast, please connect with BNI Headquarters.

So members, connect with your local directors. BNI Directors, connect with your National Office. National Offices, connect with BNI Headquarters. Boy, that really is a great segway out of last week’s podcast talking about us being global. We are definitely global, and we try to make this as easy as possible to have the branded look continually passed on down.

There are specific benefits to having a visual branded look that is consistent, and that is what I wanted to talk about this week. One of our greatest strengths as an organization is the enthusiasm and dedication of our BNI members, who love to give referrals and promote BNI. This word of mouth can be so much more powerful for and will benefit BNI members and chapters so much more now that it is backed up by a unified global brand image being used- or will be being used- all around the world. It increases visibility and brand recognition for BNI, and it makes it easier to explain BNI to non-BNI members.

So the new branding will help you as a member bring more members into your chapters, ultimately creating opportunity for more referrals by creating greater visibility and familiarity, along with credibility, with the worldwide general public. Now, the new image makes the BNI brand more memorable from a visible perspective. This increases the probability that people will say, “I visited a BNI breakfast,” rather than saying, “I visited a business breakfast meeting.”

This will help you spread the word about your BNI chapter. The more you have that brand recognition, the easier it is to bring members into the group. This new professional brand image is being systematically implemented all across the globe to ensure that all BNI chapters, Directors and National Offices are using the same instantly recognizable BNI artwork and logos. This increases the chance that any given person around the world will have heard about BNI and gives credibility and validity to others when they tell that BNI is the world’s largest most successful networking organization because it has that visual look that is consistent.

In last week’s podcast, I talked about three links. We are going to have those same three links in here, in this week’s podcast. That is a link to a PowerPoint slide that gives you the visual look across the globe. There are slight variations, depending on whether you are in the Americas, Europe or Asia. Those different continents are highlighted, Austraasia- those areas are highlighted so you know it is from that area. Otherwise, the visual look is very consistent. So we are going to have that link.

We are going to have Why We Are Changing the Corporate Look, a corporate counsel edited version of a PowerPoint presentation of that if you really want to go deep and understand why- this is a value to you as a business person if you want to expand your business into more than a local community business. The kinds of things in here are truly worth their weight in gold because it’s the legal advice over many years of how and why we wanted to do this.

The third link is the BNI Standards. You have to understand what you can or can’t do in terms of the visual look of the chapter. People within the BNI organization and outside the organization will no longer be confused as to which materials or websites are affiliated with BNI. If you look over that corporate counsel PowerPoint presentation, you’ll understand what I mean. Just do a search on Google. There are so many websites and they all look so different. You just don’t know if you are dealing with a BNI chapter.

This saves us from the risk of being viewed negatively by being mistakenly affiliated with other groups which don’t adhere to our standards and our philosophy of doing business. Because this new branding stands up and sends the message that BNI is an established, reputabel network of business professionals with chapters in every populated continent across the globe which generates billions in referrals for members each year, by using the new BNI branding effectively, we’re telling people that you are part of the world’s largest global network that has been around for decades.

I think the time will come that instead of being met by questioning looks when someone is trying to explain what BNI is to somebody that they’d like to invite to visit their group, they will be met with familiarity, interest and specific questions. That is what building a brand is all about. I have seen that happen in the last several decades, where people would say, “BNI- what is that?” to “Yeah, I have heard of BNI.” Our goal is to have every small business person know what BNI is and what it’s about. And that has to begin with a clear visual look being used all around the world, and the benefit to you is that it will make it easier for you as a member to invite people in when they have at least a general understanding or some recognition of what the brand and organization is.

We believe this will make it much easier for members to have strong chapters and to have a professional look in their chapters. We just need to get everybody using the same visual look.

Priscilla:
That’s great. I think many of us don’t even understand how important having the brand is to our businesses. So this is a good example that you guys are leading with.

Ivan:
The brand is about many different things. It’s certianly about the trademarks. It’s certianly about the visual look that we are talking about. It’s really about the PR. One of the things I think we’ve really done well on is that you can go anywhere in the world and Google business networking, and BNI will pop up on the first page, generally number one or number two. I did it yesterday in the United States. There wee 14,000,000 and BNI was number one.

It’s just amazing to me. We have really done the brand thing effectively in many ways. Where we have not done it well is in having a consistent visual look. That has to change if we are going to continue to be the global leader and have a professional standard of materials. You know, I ask that members give some consideration to this as you draft materials. Again, if you are a BNI member or leadership team, connect with your local Executive Director or local BNI Director before the materials so we can have a consistent standard all around the world.

It really does make a difference. I mean, imagine that you are in a business and you have people who are working with you. You have a logo, and they just start creating their own logo and visual look. That would be very frustrating. Well, it’s a little frustrating for us, but we think that we can get by that. We have great BNI members all around the world who have the best in mind for the organization, and we ask that you help us to maintain that visual look because it benefits all of us.

Priscilla:
That’s great. I think we’ll do it. If you’ll just provide the logo, we’ll use it.

Ivan:
Great. And again, it’s more than the logo because we have the logo. It’s the graphic of the globe that goes with the logo. It’s the height and space. It’s the font, the color, the Burgandy pms 506. I mean, It’s so much more complex that just the logo, I’ve learned, over the last year or two. So the BNI Standards material, which is one of the links, will help you understand it a little better. I appreciate members’ cooperation and participation in this. I think this will help cement our continued leadership as the world’s largest networking organization.

Priscilla:
That’s great.Thank you so much for explaining that.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I think that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

By the first of this year, you will see a new branded look for all of BNI, including this website. This is the first time we have a system to implement a unified look all across the globe. (See branding slide presentations.)

Here are five reasons why a consistent branded look are so important.

1. BNI is a global brand.
2. We want to make the new BNI brand memorable.
3. Having a uniform image protects the brand and prevents brand dilution.
4. The uniform use of the brand will prevent other groups from copying BNI.
5. There are so many localized versions of the BNI logo that it’s getting difficult to distinguish genuine BNI groups from imitations. We need one authorized version of the logo.

In the next post you’ll see two PowerPoint presentations that explain more about BNI’s new branded look. Pay special attention to Slide 15 in the first presentation.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 184 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, CA. I am joined today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I am doing great, Priscilla, talking about something that I think is pretty exciting for us. Members all around the world, keep your eyes open because you will gradually see all over the world a change to our new branded look, including this website. By the first of the year, you will see a new branded look for this website and everyhting we are doing. I think it is really exciting. For the first time in almost 26 years, we’ll be celebrating our 26th anniversary in January. It’s the first time BNI has a truly unified and global brand, but more importantly a system to implement that all across the globe. I am really thrilled to see a great step forward to really strengthen the organization and increase our worldwide visibility.

I wanted to talk about five reasons why we did this because I am a real believer- I never tell BNI members, “It’s policy,” when somebody ask[s something]. I try to train my Directors to never say we do something because it’s policy and that is the way it is done. That is a bad answer. A good answer is why. People need to know why our policies exist, why something is done a certain way. I think it is really important thing for BNI members to understand why a consistent branded look is so critical to a global organization.

So I have five points that I want to make. The first is that BNI is, in fact, a global organization. It’s a global brand. You know, the way our branding people started talking about this was at one time, BNI was a U.S. company that went international. Today, we are a global company that basically has their headquarters in the U.S. But we truly are a global organization.

Priscilla:
How many countries are we in?

Ivan:
Almost 50. As of today, we are in almost 50 countries around the world. That is growing every year. It’s crucial that we have a branded image, and this new branded material, first, of all, there will be a link here and we’ll make sure it is on the podcast with the new look. So you can click on it to see the new visual look in a Power Point slide that gives you a sense of what the new visual look is. So in this podcast, you will have a link where you can look at it.

The first reason we’re doing this is we’re a global organization. We need a global brand.

The second is making the brand memorable. It needs to be used consistently. The new BNI brand will remain memorable from a visual perspective. From a visual prospective, which will result in easier brand recall- so that when people hear the name, BNI, they get a strong visual image for what that means. You know, what image comes to mind when someone says Coca-Cola or McDonalds? You know, with Coca-Cola, it’s that calligraphy writing, and with McDonalds, it’s the “M”. There is no question what image comes to mind no matter where you are in the world or where you live.

This is what the new BNI brand image will do for BNI. It’s not just the logo, although the logo is a integral element of it. It’s the visual of the brand, which will be done in basically a map of the world, and this map is localized based on what continent. So from the US, you are going to have the Americas highlighted. In Europe, Europe will be be highlighted. Asia, the same. Australia, Asia, all of the world will be highlighted based on where they are at, but it is all based on a visual globe. But it looks the same. You could be anywhere in the world and you’d recognize that branded look, even though there is a slight variation from continent to continent with that continent being highlighted. It’s a consistent visual look.

The third reason for why- and this is an important one- is the protection of the brand. Having a uniform brand image prevents dilution of the message and the professional appearance that BNI wishes to put forth. Again, think of McDonalds and Coca-Cola. We can instantly recall their brand image, and we now what they stand for and what products they are known for because they have a uniform brand image. One of the things that I have learned in moving form literally my house into a 33,000 sq ft building over 26 years and the huge growth of this organization is that protecting the brand is very important legally for your trademarks and doing business in many countries around the world. So I ask members to understand that the visual look goes beyond just their chapter. It’s the maintenance of their brand from a legal perspective.

Fourth is the uniform use of the brand will prevent other groups from copying BNI or using the unauthorized versions of BNI’s materials and its trademarks. It’s so, so important as we become global..

The last reason why is that there are so many localized versions of the BNI logo and artwork representing BNI that is found online, that if we didn’t create this unified image, it would get easier and easier for everyone to create groups mimicking BNI and it would get harder and harder for prospective members to discern between valid BNI groups and imitation groups. This is really important.

There will be a second link. The first link will be a PowerPoint slide that gives you a sense of the visual look as it is all around the world from continent to continent. The second PowerPoint presentation- and if you have a chance take a look at this. It’s an edited version of a PowerPoint presentation that BNI’s corporate counsel did as to why we have to get our act together on the brand and why it needs to be consistent. I want you to look at this PowerPoint presentation; I particularly want members to look at slide number 15, which is other modified BNI logos. These are regions or chapters that took the BNI logo and modified it in some way, and it is shocking how the BNI has been changed, just the logo.

Any brand expert in the world will tell you this is really, really, bad from a branding perspective and really bad from a legal perspective. So we have to stop having the logo altered. There are probably ten different versions of the logo there on slide 15, and none of them, not one, are authorized logos. So take a look at that PowerPoint, and that PowerPoint will go in detail and take you really in depth as to why this is so important. There is a lot more content than I can do in a ten or twelve minute podcast.

Put simply, this new brand image is cementing the credibility that we have developed over more than 25 years, building a global organization, and it will help prevent us risk losing credibility due to unrecognizable diluted brand image. I hope that members can take a few minutes to just look over this material, look over these links.

The last link in this podcast will be a link to BNI branding standards, so that anybody that wants to use our branded material has to go and read this so that they use it properly. One of the great things about growth is that it’s exciting to have all this growth. But one of the challenges about growth is keeping everybody kind of coloring within the lines. Entrepreneurs like coloring outside the lines. That’s great and it’s one of the reasons why we’ve grown, but it can be problematic when it comes to inconsistent brand. For most businesses, it’s their franchisees or their corporate offices that have access to the logo and are using it. In our case, it’s the clients. It’s our members who have access and are using it.

So sometimes things can easily get changed by members and by chapters when we really have to have that consistent brand. I ask members to take a few minutes to look at this material, and work with us to maintain the brand recognition that has helped build this organization to be the world’s largest business networking organization. It’s happened because of our attention to details like this.

That’s everything I’ve got, Priscilla. As a member, you’re a member of a chapter- what are your thoughts on this?

Priscilla:
I don’t think I ever gave much thought about the brand. I mean, we’re presented with some materials when we join BNI. It has a logo and you just sort of go forward from there. You don’t really think much about it. Hearing about the importance of branding, I think, is good for all business people just to know that maybe individually, maybe we should be working on our own brand and why that is important, might be important to us.

Ivan:
That’s a good point. With this podcast, I wanted to talk about why we did it and the importance of why we did it. Next week, I want to talk about the benefits. What are the benefits to a member, for us, having a consistent brand. That’s what I want to talk about in the next podcast. If you’re listening to this podcast, remember the three links that are here. One is the new look. One is the PowerPoint from our legal counsel as to why we are changing and building a specific brand. The third is the BNI standards. If you have a chance, please take a look at these three links.

Priscilla, thank you so much for the podcast today.

Priscilla:
Great. Thank you so much, Ivan. Well, that’s it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

Small Business Trends Radio named The Official BNI Podcast to its 100 Best Small Business Podcasts of 2010. (We’re in the “Marketing and Sales” section.)

Dr. Misner would like to acknowledge the following people for their contribution to this podcast:

• Priscilla Rice, show host and owner of Live Oak Studio—and her brilliant sound engineer, James
• Sallie Goetsch of the Podcast Asylum, who handles all the geeky behind-the-scenes stuff
• Renee Snyder, who transcribes the podcasts so you can read the whole text of each episode
• Brady Vercher of Blazer Six, theme designer and web developer, who keeps the BNIpodcast.com infrastructure from coming apart.

Thanks for listening and see you next year!

Dr. Ivan Misner with Priscilla Rice at the BNI International Conference, November 7, 2009.

Ponder Pearls is a thought for the day program available free to BNI podcast listeners. Dr. Misner has been writing for this program. The program contains a remarkable array of positive quotes from well-known authors, sacred texts, public figures, and entrepreneurs. Examples of Dr. Misner’s quotes: “Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge” and “Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting.”

Go to the Ponder Pearls website and use the gift code “BNI” to register for free. Then leave a comment here to let Dr. Misner what you think about the service.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 113 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you?

Ivan:
Doing great, Priscilla. Last week I was in Japan; this week I’m in Australia for the BNI conference in Australia, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s later this week, and I’m sure I’ll come back with lots of great stories about my visit Down Under; some really great chapters in Australia that have been operating for a long time.

Priscilla:
So what do you have to share with us?

Ivan:
Well, this week I want to talk about something that’s available to all BNI members; it’s called Ponder Pearls, and it’s all about a Thought for the Day program that I’m participating in, and I have a gift for all BNI members.

Priscilla:
What’s that?

Ivan:
Last year I started writing for a great company called Ponders and Principles, which publishes a thought a day software program called Ponder Pearls, and I’d like to offer all my podcast listeners a free Ponder Pearl subscription. That’s always a good price, isn’t it?

Priscilla:
Absolutely!

Ivan:
It is free, totally free. Ponder Pearls can be installed on any personal computer, and each day, a positive, entertaining, and inspiring thought is delivered to you, as an individual, via a small window that pops up on the bottom right-hand corner on your computer monitor when you download the program and participate in it.

The program contains really a remarkable array of categorized thought series ranging from content by best selling authors such as Brian Tracy and yours truly, number of my books are quoted, to sacred world texts. And you can also choose from a variety of themes such as innovators and entrepreneurs, sports coaches, athletes, public figures, and many, many more. They even have a program called Bafflers where they ask a question, and if you want to see the answer to it, you click onto it for the answer. Today’s Baffler was: What is the most plentiful metal in the earth’s crust? The answer is: aluminum.

So you can sign up for a Baffler, which is an unusual question. Or you can sign up for a Thought for the Day, which includes a number of quotes that I’ve done as well as many, many other people.

Priscilla:
Can you give us an example of one of the quotes?

Ivan:
Sure, a lot of the things I talk about from some of my books like: Success is the uncommon application of common knowledge. Or: Networking is more about farming that it is about hunting; it’s about cultivating relationships with other business professionals. Or: Its’ not what you know or who you know; it’s how well you know them that really counts in business.

These are some of my quotes that are on Ponder Pearls. And of course, there are many others including various religious texts as well as public figures and other people. You get to pick; you get to pick who you want to have the quote of the day come from. And you can change it up; it doesn’t have to be the same all the time. And did I mention it’s free!?

Priscilla:
Yeah. How long is it free for, Ivan?

Ivan:
Permanently.

Priscilla:
Really?

Ivan:
There are some more expanded programs that you can get, but the service, I do believe they have a fee for, but the service that I’m describing right now is completely free. I’ve been subscribed for more than a year, more than a year, and they’ve never asked me for any money whatsoever for this service. So it’s a great little service. And for BNI members, particularly leadership people who have to do quotes or asked to do quotes at the end of every BNI meeting, it’s a great little service to get various quotes to wrap up a BNI meeting.

So basically, there are hundreds of excerpt thoughts from my books and seminars as well as many other people, and I’m even in the process of sending in more content to be distributed over time.

So BNI directors and members who love this kind of concept should go to PonderPearls.com, PonderPearls.com. And I invite you to take advantage of the free subscription. Once you go to that Web site, PonderPearls.com, you want to enter this as the gift code. If you enter this code, you will get the service for free. The code is really complicated to remember: BNI. That’s it; just those three letters. Enter “BNI” in the gift code field under the blue Ponder Pearls logo banner, and then create your own free Ponder Pearls account following the prompts, which include downloading the software that will then, every morning, send you the quote of the day automatically. So when you start up your computer each day or first thing in the morning, it will just automatically pop up with your quote.

It’s a great little service. I really like it. Everybody who’s signed up for it has thanked me and really enjoyed it. And what I would love to put out to everyone is, when you’ve tried it, drop me a note here on BNIPodcast.com and let me know what you think about the service. And I hope BNI members all around the world enjoy it and use it.

Priscilla:
Great, Ivan. Well, thank you so much. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we close this podcast?

Ivan:
Nope. I would just love to get comments from members. As you use this, just drop me a little note here and tell me what quote you liked and how you’re going to use this material, and that would be wonderful.

Thank you, Priscilla:

Priscilla:
Okay, good.

All right, listeners, I just want to remind you that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

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Thanks for listening and see you next year!