I am excited to help our clients reach their full potential in the world of social media. “Full potential” in social media means utilizing social media channels to build a community around your organization. That has to be the end goal for any effective strategy, and the only way to build that community is to engage in two-way communication.

“A Facebook strategy”… or “Twitter strategy”… or “Tumblr strategy”… isn’t a strategy. Those are tools of the trade, great tools, powerful tools, but tools all the same.

Four years ago when I first started working in social media, we were thinking about our Second Life strategy, as well as considering Orkut and MySpace. Today, few brands would consider any of those platforms. Many of the other services that we used then are either out of business or were absorbed by more dominant companies.

The social media universe today is ever changing. I give presentations on social media often, and I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people tense up when I mention a new service.

“Path? What’s that?”

“Do I really need a Pinterest strategy?”

“Does anyone use foursquare?”

These are common questions, and all of them make sense from a brand perspective. After all, most organizations do not have the resources to build an effective presence for every service that exists, and I would never recommend that you launch on a social network where you can’t sustain your efforts.

My advice is to pay attention to new services as they emerge because you never know which one will take off. But the far more important task is to develop a plan that will fit in with any and all social networks.

I always tell people it isn’t the services that matter, nor the tools, it is your viewpoint on what you are trying to accomplish and how that is ultimately the most important.

Services will come and go. Platforms will fade. It is the principles behind how to use social media that are not going away. Over decades, people had become accustomed to one-way communication as speakers communicated from podiums and we took notes, television shows and news only generated conversation inside of our living room or around the water cooler, if that, and we read the news that editors decided that we should read.

One-way communication was the way to go in this world. Brands worried about control, always, and the ultimate goal was to deliver a message to us common folk. The goal was decidedly not to hear back from us.

Today, however, television broadcasts weave in Twitter and promote hashtags. People tell the world what they are watching on GetGlue. We expect our political leaders to communicate through social media, and actually answer our questions from time to time. More and more of us use services like Flipboard to digest the news that we want to read, as opposed to the news that others want us to read.

No matter what services come and go, the genie is not going back in the bottle. Two-way communication is here to stay, as is consumer generated content. Your organization must navigate the social media universe with that in mind.

For now, virtually every business (I might argue every business) needs a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account as part of its strategy.

But if you have compelling visuals and value showing your story? Instagram might be a good fit for your brand, as it has been for Kate Spade, Starbucks, and others.

Do you have content that translates well to video? Consider YouTube or Vimeo as the home for your content.

Do you have a physical location and wish to extend rewards to frequent customers? Foursquare might be essential.

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network of the moment, and Tumblr the fastest growing microblogging software. Both might fit within your overall social media strategy, but you have to decide where your customers are as well.

One of the best examples of that decision making recently was Chobani Yogurt’s decision to sign up for Pinterest. They only made the call to sign up for Pinterest once they saw their consumers using the service, and then they wisely made the decision to ride the wave.

Your organization needs to keep up with new services, not because you have to be on all of them, but because you need to keep up with your own customer base.

One of the more exciting aspects of social media is that we can actually engage in a conversation with our customers. That is what you have to do to succeed. It is a little scary and hard to control, but can enormously rewarding for the brands that seize the moment and dedicate themselves to building community.

Those brands will be the ones that win the 21st Century.

Nation brings a unique background to New Kind, having worked with political campaigns, social causes, and professional sports. Most recently he served as Digital Director of the United Football League, increasing the fan base of the UFL over 1000% across multiple platforms.

Nation, a UNC alum with a degree in Communications and specialty in Media Production, will serve as New Kind’s first Director of Engagement. In that capacity he will work with our clients to expand their presence and effectiveness engaging communities through the use of digital tools and strategies, including social media.

As a seasoned corporate executive, I believe Nation brings an attribute to our team that cannot be underestimated.  At 25 years old, he provides a healthy dose of youthful exuberance in the way he approaches building communities, especially when it comes to embracing the newest social media tools.

Most every organization has a Facebook page or a Twitter account. But it takes much more than a social media “presence” to remain competitive today. You must have a clear digital strategy that seamlessly connects your digital efforts and communities with everything else—inside, outside, and around your organization. In Nation we have found a Millennial for whom use of the social media comes naturally, yet who also understands how it fits into a larger organizational framework.

Nation also brings another important attribute to New Kind, a genuine passion for making the world a better place. I’m confident that his commitment to and passion for the use of social media will be infectious to all of us on the New Kind team and most importantly, to the clients we serve.

So please join me in welcoming Nation to New Kind. You’ll be hearing more from him soon.

One of the many interesting things about Dr. Kahneman is that, as a psychologist, he actually won his Nobel prize in economics. If you are interested in learning more about how that happened, go here.

Over the last few months, Kahneman’s book has been sitting near the new Jim Collins book Great by Choice in the rarefied air of Amazon.com’s top 100 books list (I reviewed Great by Choice a few months back here). So I thought it was interesting that Kahneman challenged Jim Collins and his book Built to Last in Chapter 19. It was a pointed attack not just on Collins but the entire genre of success story-inspired business books.

Since I spend quite a bit of time reading these sorts of books, I was really interested in his viewpoint. I mean, have I been wasting time reading that I could just as usefully spent watching reruns of Tosh.O or Arrested Development on TV? Is there real value in studying successful businesses and leaders or is it just an illusion?

Here’s what Kahneman says:

“The basic message of Built to Last and other similar books is that good managerial practices can be identified and that good practices will be rewarded by good results. Both messages are overstated. The comparison of firms that have been more or less successful is to a significant extent a comparison between firms that have been more or less lucky. Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.”

Ouch.

Kahneman cites Philip Rosenzweig’s book The Halo Effect (which is now on my reading list) and quickly jumps to the punchline of that book:

“[Rosenzweig] concludes that stories of success and failure consistently exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices on firm outcomes, and thus their message is rarely useful.”

So are we to believe Kahneman and Rosenzweig? Is there really no value in studying the leadership and management practices of great companies?

Even after reading the whole book Thinking, Fast and Slow and understanding the psychological principles that trick my brain into applying great importance to these sorts of success stories, I still find the conclusion a hard one to accept. And then Kahneman throws the knockout punch:

“Stories of how businesses rise and fall strike a chord with readers by offering what the human mind needs: a simple message of triumph and failure that identifies clear causes and ignores the determinative power of luck and the inevitability of regression. These stories induce and maintain an illusion of understanding, imparting lessons of little enduring value to readers who are all too eager to believe them.”

Okay, I get it. Kahneman views me as a sucker. And who am I to argue with a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist?

But I just can’t help it. I think there is plenty that we can learn from the lessons of innovative businesses like those that Collins profiles in Built to Last. Kahneman may be right that these books suffer from an illusion of academic rigor that breaks down under close study. And yes, they probably need a disclaimer (“The author makes no promise or guarantee that if you follow the principles outlined in this book you will become Google overnight. Individual results may vary.”).

But what these books lack in academic rigor they make up for in one simple area: they inspire people. To not settle for what they see today. To try something new. To learn. To grow. To believe.

They create the possibility of hope. “Others have done it. I could too!”

So in that sense, Kahneman’s critique is somewhat akin to an adult telling a three-year old child that there is no Santa Claus. My view? The analysis is technically correct, but emotionally bankrupt.

Where success story business books fail the analytical brain, they often are just what the emotional brain needs.

So I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep on reading business books. By constantly refueling my head with new ideas, I’ll always have something to learn and try. I’ll continue to be inspired by authors like Jim Collins, by companies and leaders who have seen great success, and I’ll suspend my academic doubts in the hope of learning new lessons that might just work.

I’d love to hear what you think. If you believe Kahneman’s critique of Collins and the genre is on the money, or if you believe instead that there is still value in sharing and learning from business success stories, let me know in the comments section below.

But from what I can tell, HP didn’t do the unveiling.

Instead, the new brand identity was showcased as a case study on the website of Moving Brands, the lead agency hired by HP to work on the creative vision for the HP brand, a project that began in 2008. Not only is the final work product fantastic, but the process the team went through to design the identity was also incredibly smart and current.

Here’s a short video from the Moving Brands website that showcases the new identity:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To me, this is a really wonderful example of thoughtful identity work done right. The UnderConsideration article in particular does a nice job of breaking down the process they used. Or watch this video from the case study that shows how the process worked from the inside:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’ve been following tech news, you may have seen that HP, which has been a wee bit shaky in the leadership department over the past few years, in September hired former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to take over the top leadership spot after the very short tenure of Leo Apotheker.

One can only speculate if, with the changing of the guard, this project was cancelled or moved to the back burner (TechCrunch calls it “The Radical HP Rebranding That Never Was”), but an agency revealing a company’s new identity to the world on its behalf is something I’ve never witnessed before.

An agency gone rogue or a carefully scripted unofficial test of the new identity? Hmm…

One way or another, I must say that after suffering through the last couple of years of major brand identity launch flubs like The Gap and Tropicana, whether on purpose or not, this identity rollout (as weird as it may sound) feels perfect to me.

Why?

Because it is so different than the old skool agency “Big Reveal” of a new identity (“Look what’s behind this curtain! It’s a shiny new logo!”).

I hate the Big Reveal.

First off, the Big Reveal smacks of agency arrogance. Our agency geniuses have gone behind closed doors, deeply breathed in the raw sewage of your current brand… and what has emerged? Why these beautiful, fresh, sweet-smelling brand flowers (and we threw in a spiffy new font for you too… just because we could!).

Second, the Big Reveal always implies a product that is already finished when people first get to see it. Even the patron saint of brand identity Paul Rand was famous for presenting his designs as “take it or leave it.” IBM took it, as did UPS. Steve Jobs did too, after getting put in his place by Rand.

This way of revealing brand identity may have worked in the past, but it faces some very real challenges today in a world driven by social media. The new Gap logo was revealed to the Gap brand community the old way and then quickly rejected through the power of the combined community voice on blogs and social media networks. It never stood a chance.

We will see this kind of community-driven brand influence more and more over the coming years as the communities that surround brands gain more and more power over their direction, and the companies that own them can control less and less.

Which is why I like how this new HP logo came out, whether the company meant for it to happen this way or not. Rather than inflicting a new logo on us that we’ve never seen before as a done deal, we were presented—informally—not just a logo, but the entire story of how the identity got to this point, transparently, openly, and, most importantly, before the decision had been made.

I love when brands are built collaboratively with the people who care most about the brand, both inside and outside the company. By being revealed informally while still a work in progress, this new HP identity feels to me like the beginning of an open conversation with the HP brand community.

Who knows whether HP will stifle that conversation, ignore it, or become an active participant. Only time will tell.

But I have to hand it to the folks at Moving Brands who led the process. This is either a clever way to get some feedback for their client and start a dialog before a bigger commitment is made or it is a ballsy attempt to win over the HP brand community with high-quality work and then enlist the community’s help to force HP not to abandon the project.

Either way, I love it. It’s great design work and a pitch-perfect roll out strategy for the times.

Let’s see what happens next.

HP? Your move.

For those who have not heard of the Eisenhower Fellowship (a truly great organization) its purpose is to “engage emerging leaders from around the world to enhance their professional capabilities, broaden their contacts, deepen their perspectives, and unite them in a diverse, global community – a network where dialogue, understanding and collaboration lead to a more prosperous, just and peaceful world.”

The organization is led by John Wolfe, a former US Foreign Service Officer,  Assistant Secretary of State and US Ambassador to Malaysia.  In the late 90’s I was fortunate to have served as a private sector member of the US Delegation to the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) Meeting in Singapore and met Ambassador Wolfe at that time. The organization could not have a better leader.

I am also privileged to personally know a number of Eisenhower Fellows who have participated in the program from North Carolina and they are the best of the best, so I was very excited when New Kind was asked to participate in their meeting.

I was joined in the presentation to the Fellows by my New Kind colleagues David Burney and Matt Munoz.

My presentation dealt with “Leading Through Adversity,” a situation that all leaders face at one time or another in their career. I shared some real life examples of challenges I faced as an executive early in my Red Hat career and how I dealt with them.

My colleague David Burney talked about the changing management paradigm around the concept of “openness.” In particular, he explained how the management of the best corporations and organizations in the world was evolving from command and control to an environment where the best ideas win, without regard to the hierarchical rank of the person offering them. He also shared the importance of leaders being able to effectively tell their organizations’ stories.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to work for some of the world’s best known and successful companies led by some of the world’s greatest leaders. It was always amazing to me how some executives were able to climb the corporate ladder, but still were unable to effectively tell the story of the company.

At New Kind we pride ourselves on being able to help complex organizations tell their stories simply, so that their employees, executives, stakeholders and most importantly, their customers understand why they exist. We believe that stories are at the very heart of any movement, whether social, political, or even the type that helps Apple sell more iPhones or Starbucks sell more coffee.

My colleague, Matt Munoz used his time with the Eisenhower Fellows to offer a primer on design thinking and how it can be an important tool for leaders of high-performance organizations. He cited the 2010 Global CEO survey’s finding that “CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics.”  He explained how design thinking focuses on the use of creativity as a tool to solve problems.

The Eisenhower Fellows were given an opportunity to test some of the concepts that they heard from us in breakout groups as well.

Judging from the feedback that we received from the Eisenhower Fellows, both at the conclusion of our session and through subsequent emails that we have received from around the world since the meeting, the participants understood our messages and considered our presentations a valuable use of their time.

We learned a lot too. And it was a great honor and privilege for us to have the opportunity to share our philosophy about what it really takes for a leader to be successful in the 21^st century, especially with such an important group of leaders from around the world.

How to find brand ambassadors

Start by identifying the people inside your organization who have the best relationships with each community. These people are the best candidates to become your brand ambassadors. The ideal brand ambassador is already an actual community member, actively participating in conversations and projects with other community members.

While an employee of your organization, this person shares common values, interests, and experiences with other community members. It is less important what position they hold within your organization and more important how they are viewed by the community itself.

After you’ve identified possible brand ambassadors, reach out to them to see if they are willing and interested in expanding their personal roles in the community to include being representatives of your brand as well. Some might already be playing this role, others might be playing this role and not realizing it.

Don’t force or pressure people. The ideal candidate will be excited to be considered and will be passionate about the opportunity, so if your best candidate doesn’t seem interested, try to find someone else who is.

Creating brand ambassadors from scratch

If you don’t have anyone in your organization who is already a member of the community, you’ll need to have someone join. Choose someone who understands your organization’s story and positioning well but also already shares interests, values, and experiences with the community in question.

Have this person attend meetings, join mailing lists, participate on forums, and otherwise begin to contribute to the community first as an individual. It will take a little longer to get started, but it will be worth it if your brand ambassador has a deep contextual understanding of the community before they dive right in officially representing your organization.

Brand ambassadors as faces of the brand

You should ensure that your brand ambassadors deeply understand your brand positioning so they can live it (not just speak to it) in their activities within these external communities. If you are developing many brand ambassadors at once, consider hosting a brand ambassador bootcamp where new ambassadors can practice telling the brand story and get aligned on the overall positioning of the organization. Also use this as an opportunity to emphasize the key role of these ambassadors in developing the brand experience and keeping relationships with the community healthy and productive.

You may have some communities where there is a whole team of ambassadors, not just one. For example, at Red Hat, a large team of developers represented Red Hat (and themselves) in the Fedora community. Invest as many ambassadors as you need in order to provide the best possible support for and adequately communicate with the community.

As you recruit brand ambassadors, you extend the internal core of the brand. Although it is wonderful to see your core group getting bigger, extending your reach is also an important time to ensure consistency. Be very careful to take the time to educate all brand ambassadors well so the entire brand orchestra stays in key.

Brand ambassador philosophy

Wikipedia defines an ambassador as “the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization.” Usually an ambassador lives and operates within the country or organization where he is assigned.

Your brand ambassadors should channel the same philosophy. While they are members of your organization, they should “live” within the communities they are assigned to as much as possible while representing your organization within that community.

Great brand ambassadors are loyal to the organization and to the community at the same time. They develop relationships of respect, honesty, and trust within the community, which allows them to clearly and openly communicate the priorities, desires, and needs of both sides.

Brand ambassadors are not just mouthpieces for the organization, but should also maintain their own personality, interests, and opinions in the community—often distinct from those of the organization. In places where they are representing their own opinions and ideas, they should provide the proper disclaimers. With a little practice, this is not nearly as difficult as it might sound. The key is maintaining an authentic personal voice while being open, transparent, and human in their communications.

Don’t think someone in your organization has the right makeup to be a good ambassador based on what you see here, even if he or she has good relationships within the community? Don’t make him or her an ambassador. The brand ambassador is a representative of your brand to the outside world, and the job carries a lot of responsibility and requires a high emotional intelligence and diplomatic sensibility to do well.

So take the time to find, train, and support brand ambassadors within your organization. With some attention and focus, you may soon find that your network of ambassadors becomes one of your organization’s most valuable assets.

The hackathon is a large-scale collaborative effort where folks from all around the world are joining together to develop a set of innovative management hacks that might help fix what is broken about the way our organizations operate today.

I’ll be joined as the guide/facilitator for this hackathon by my MIX colleague Michele Zanini and New Kind’s own Jonathan Opp.

Over the past few weeks, almost 450 people have signed up. So it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun.

Today it is finally time to get started. If you haven’t signed up yet and are interested, it is very easy—just go here to create your account, then review the orientation materials and head straight to the Sprint #1 instructions.

If you want to get a taste of what we are covering in Sprint #1, here’s a video introduction to the sprint from Gary Hamel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For writers, designers, or anyone in a creative field, notebooks are your place to record inspiration and craft ideas. I’m rarely without one. My notebook collecting has bordered on the obsessive—and many of my notebooks are made by Moleskine.

Moleskine notebooks have long been a favorite tool for designers. I can’t imagine an audience that is more important and influential to their brand strategy. Which is why I was so disappointed to see Moleskine launch a contest to crowdsource a logo project.

As many designers will tell you, crowdsourcing is a seriously contentious term for the design community. Rather than hiring a professional designer and paying them for their work, a company asks many to do the work, rewards one winner with a token prize, and keeps all of the submissions to use as they wish. Since the designers aren’t able to work with the company to understand the business or their goals, they have to throw out the design equivalent of a hail mary.

These contests devalue the role of the designer and the client-designer relationship. When a company runs a contest like this, it sends a message that a brand is little more than a logo, and a logo is little more than an image and type that can be designed by anyone regardless of their level of knowledge of you and your brand.

Design organizations like AIGA have been very vocal against these contests for this reason. Recently the Obama campaign decided to crowdsource a poster contest—for its support of jobs creation, of all things. Here was AIGA’s response.

One glance at Moleskine’s Facebook page will tell you what their fans think of their contest.

Moleskine certainly isn’t the only organization to try to launch a design project as a contest. But the reason Moleskine has received such an incredible backlash is because we’re so passionate about their brand. We’re not just consumers of these products—in a way, they’re part of who we are. It’s our brand, too.

Which means this is more than just a case of a brand gone bad, it’s a betrayal.

Moleskine could certainly be considered what my colleague Chris Grams would call an Ad-Free Brand. In fact, before this incident, I think they could have been a great example in his book. Their brand was crafted around an irresistible story of artists and writers like Van Gogh and Hemingway creating with notebooks just like these.

Moleskine owes much of its success to a passionate creative community who have carried their notebooks into coffeeshops and client meetings—helping them share the story of the brand. Now they’re sharing a different story.

The events that have followed in the past few days are a case study for anyone building a brand and a community.

So what should Moleskine have done differently, and what can they do to fix it now?

1. Pay attention to your most passionate audience.

They are your most frequent customers, your most enthusiastic advertisers, your strongest advocates, and if you screw up—your worst enemies. They are the reason you’re in business. Take the time to engage with your community and understand what they’re passionate about.

Moleskine clearly made a mistake not knowing how the design community would feel about a crowdsourced contest. It’s also clear by looking at Facebook and Twitter from the last few days, Moleskine has no shortage of people in their community who care and would be willing to offer them advice. One guy even offered free brand consulting and left his phone number.

2. When you make a mistake, listen and engage.

When your most passionate and profitable audience is angry, you need to listen. And show you’re listening. This is not the time to be defensive, as was Moleskine’s first response on Facebook. It was along the lines of “Other companies are doing this.” and “You’re free not to enter.” The tone was all wrong. Of course this only fanned the flames.

Create a dialogue instead. The word “dialogue” comes from the Greek words dia or “through,” and logos, or “meaning.” Now would be a good time to make some.

This doesn’t mean you have to surrender your brand to mob rule. But you do have to engage in the conversation and show you’re listening. Even if you can’t make everyone happy, you can still help make things right.

3. Work with your community to correct the problem—and while the conversation is still happening.

Here’s where Moleskine failed again. Their second response was certainly more apologetic, but it didn’t correct the problem or show a true understanding of the issue. In the response, Moleskine said they would change one of the contest rules so the company wouldn’t retain the rights to the non-winning entries.

Most designers would still consider it spec since only one designer is rewarded for their work. It doesn’t solve the problem of devaluing the role of design or the designer.

Even now, it’s still not too late. The conversation is still active. Some tend to think when the passionate voices go silent, it means they’ve accepted your decision—when really it just means they’ve given up on you.

That hasn’t happened yet. I hope it won’t. I need a new notebook.

At the beginning of any design thinking project, David shares a set of rules that help get every participant on the same page. The rules apply to everyone (including executives) and help create an optimal environment for creativity. If you are planning to run a project using a design thinking approach, you might want to consider sharing these rules with your group before you get started. I’ve used this list many times, and I promise, it really helps keep things on track.

1. Avoid the devil’s advocate: The devil’s advocate is someone who (purposely or accidentally) shoots down the ideas of others without taking any personal responsibility for his actions. The devil’s advocate often begins his objection with the phrase “Let me be the devil’s advocate for a second…”. The devil’s advocate often intends to be helpful by pointing out flaws in an idea, but ultimately this focuses people’s attention on what won’t work rather than exploring unexpected ways that it might work.

2. Make agendas transparent: Every participant should make their personal agendas as clear as possible.

3. Leave titles at the door: No one person’s ideas are worth more than anyone else’s.

4. Generate as many ideas as possible: During ideation, you are not trying to generate the best ideas; you are trying to generate the most ideas.

5. Build on the ideas of others rather than judging them: If someone else has an idea you like, build on it. If you don’t like an idea, share another one rather than critiquing.

6. Stay on time: Don’t let your ideation session spiral out of control. Each ideation session should be timed and should have a clear ending point.

7. State the obvious: Sometimes things that can seem obvious reveal great insight from their simplicity.

8. Don’t sell or debate ideas: Selling and debating ideas takes time away from generating new ideas.

9. Stupid and wild ideas are good: Sometimes the craziest ideas lead to the best ideas.

10. DTA stands for death to acronyms: Avoid acronyms—they are exclusionary because people who don’t know what they stand for will quickly be lost. If you must use an acronym, write what it stands for somewhere everyone can see it. Keep a running list of all acronyms used during the project or session.

11. Always understand in which stage of the process you are: When you are ideating, you are not critiquing ideas. But when ideation is over and you begin the process of selecting the best ideas, you’ll need to discuss the merits of each idea in a more traditional, analytical way.

12. Play is good, have fun: The more fun you are having as a group, the more creative ideas you’ll generate.

If you’d like to learn more about design thinking and how you can use it in your projects, I recommend any of the following books.

From the amazing team at IDEO:

- The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown

Other great books to consider:

- The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin
- Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value by Thomas Lockwood

You may have also seen the announcement that Apple pre-sold 1 million units of its new iPhone 4S on the first day it was available, blowing away previous records. This positive news comes after many people (especially those in the media), expecting a completely new iPhone 5, greeted last week’s iPhone 4S announcement with disappointment.

Meanwhile, over at Facebook, privacy concerns continue to mount as the latest site enhancements caused some to question the addition of cookies that would supposedly allow Facebook to track users’ movements even once they log off the service.

I put these three events together because they showcase how three of the most successful and powerful brands of our time interact with their brand communities as they innovate quickly and aggressively.

What do all three companies share? First, confidence. They can see their destiny, they have a plan in place to control it, and no one—not even their customers—is allowed to slow their innovation engines down. What else do all three share? They all also have passionate communities of people who care deeply about them and watch every move they make closely.

In each case, these two forces—the company’s own self confidence and the pressure and expectations that a deeply engaged and passionate brand community brings—can lead to highly-charged, high-risk announcements, communications, and interactions.

So why is Apple so successful at keeping the relationship with its brand community healthy? Why is Netflix stumbling so badly? And why is Facebook in a dangerous spot?

In my view it comes down to a difference in the way each company approaches the give and take transactions with their brand community, the way they manage their community karma.

Creating a healthy brand community is a lot like managing a bank account. In order to remain in good standing, you must make more deposits in the karma bank than withdrawals. And this is where Apple, Facebook, and Netflix begin to differ.

On one end of the spectrum is Apple. The company showers us with delightful new products and innovations. Apple surprises us. Apple entertains us. But most of all, we’ve come to expect that almost every product Apple makes is going to fundamentally change the way we work and play. By creating great, impactful stuff that really does improve our lives in meaningful ways (I haven’t used a computer that runs Microsoft Windows in more than a decade… but I still remember EXACTLY how it felt), Apple is constantly making deposits in the community karma bank.

And while many folks were upset that Apple didn’t launch an iPhone 5 last week, I’ll point out that it was a stronger karma decision to launch an upgraded version of the iPhone 4 and call it a 4S than to launch an upgraded iPhone 4 and call it an iPhone 5 (as many other companies would have done). When an iPhone 5 is ready, we will know it, I’m sure.

That’s not to say that Apple doesn’t make karma withdrawals too. It does. Apple, you annoy me with your crappy restrictions on what I can do with music I download from you. I dislike your anti-competitive app store practices, and you scare me every time I have to click through a new version of your license agreement.

But when it comes right down to it, you give me more than you take, Apple, so I must admit I still love you.

On the other end of the spectrum we have our friends at Netflix. For years, Netflix was a dutiful investor in the karma bank. The company made their site elegant and easy to use, the social functionality and ratings were helpful, and, when streaming came along, it was like Christmas.

Personally, I loved Netflix. I loved it so much that I even bought a new TV last year on the strength of one feature—I could seamlessly stream Netflix movies directly to it.

But something changed. Over the last six months, I’ve noticed that Netflix has started making more karma withdrawals than deposits.

First, the Netflix site quit getting better. I don’t know about you, but I found it harder and harder to search for new movies. Netflix has always tried to push you toward the backlist titles and older movies, and I get why that made sense with the DVD-by-mail system. But why not make it easy for me to find your newest on-demand titles? I got frustrated and quit using it as much because it seemed like the site was actually losing searching/browsing functionality rather than getting better (was that my imagination?).

Then Netflix hit me with the price increase. Now I don’t mind paying more when I’m getting more, but at the time the price increase was announced it had become clear that Netflix’s agreements with distributors were souring and that they might even lose access to many on-demand films. This on top of my frustrations with the site, created my first negative Netflix experiences.

Still, Netflix had enough positive karma with me, built up over years, that we remained buddies.

Then, on September 19th, Reed Hastings sent me an email (under cover of night, at 3:31 AM, mind you) that started as an apology and quickly turned from mea culpa into double down. If you got the email, you were likely either A) angry or B) wondering if Reed might soon have an opening to hire you to help with his communications strategy.

Not only was Netflix going to keep the price increase, they were going to significantly degrade the customer experience by splitting the business in two and forcing their customers to log in to two completely different sites if they wanted to stay a customer of both the streaming and DVD-by-mail businesses. I understood the business strategy and why it made sense… but the communications strategy and the way the whole thing was positioned was just plain terrible. As someone in the communications business myself, I felt the need to look away.

And that was the moment Netflix made one more karma withdrawal than I could take. In the weeks since I received that email I have 1) bought a Roku box so I can stream on my TV from someone other than Netflix if I want to 2) started using the free streaming I get as a member of Amazon Prime and 3) made the decision to go on a break from Netflix until it gets its karma account back in order.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Since the announcement, the Netflix stock has fallen off a cliff, down from just over $200 to around $110 a share (and it was at $300 a share this summer). The announcement today may not have come soon enough, only time will tell.

Netflix, I still think we might have a future together, but man do you have some work to do.

Which brings us to Facebook. Now Facebook is a very interesting case to look at because of one thing that makes it very different than the other two companies: it doesn’t charge me any real money.

Facebook is a free service, and typically our expectations of a free service are very low. Investments in the karma bank add up quickly when the service is free. For years, Facebook has earned our love by helping us reconnect with long lost friends and relatives, while allowing us to actively keep in touch with more people at once than we ever could with a pen, phone, or email.

The real price of using Facebook—our privacy and personal data—was one that was originally only too high for a fringe group of digital conspiracy theorists. But over the past year, Facebook has become more and more intrusive, less respectful of what little privacy it still allows us, and has at the same time claimed more ownership of our personal data, using it in ways that are less clearly in our own interests.

The double whammy is that at the same time, the service is becoming incrementally less valuable to many people. Now that you are connected to all of these folks that you haven’t seen in 20 years and know what their kids are having for breakfast… then what?

I’ve noticed more and more of my friends on Facebook are going largely silent. It is good to have the network there when you need it and want to reach out to someone. But my perception is that the regular updates are decreasing, the number of times I’m tempted to click the “like” buttons has gone way down as I wonder how Facebook intends to exploit my click, and I’m unlikely to upload any personal photos or videos until I am 100% positive they aren’t going to show up in some banner ad for deodorant.

I wonder if Facebook is nearing a critical juncture. Because the service is free, I think Facebook will likely be able to avoid the rapid depletion of the karma reserve that Netflix has seen over the past few months. But as more people become aware of the true costs of using Facebook—in terms of loss of control of our privacy and personal data—and the incremental value of Facebook begins to level off, could the karma bank for Facebook go negative, even as a free service?

I don’t know. But if I were at Facebook, I’d certainly be starting to worry about it. Especially if I had a competitor like Google (with its own karma stumbles, but an overall better track record of respecting personal data) lurking, waiting for Facebook to make one too many withdrawals.

I’m sure many of you have strong views about these three brands. If you do, and either agree or disagree with my analysis, I’d love to hear your thoughts.