Ed Delia Subscribe to Ed's articles (Visit Ed's Website) Ed Delia grew up in the dynamic and challenging world of marketing. In 1998, he was named president of Delia Associates, assuming full control of the company founded by his father in 1964. Delia Associates has directly contributed to the success and growth of a wide varitey of clients, helping businesses expand their sales opportunities through the development and implementation of highly successful branding campaigns. In 2007, Ed became only the ninth professional in N.J. to earn the Professional Certified Marketer designation from the American Marketing Association, Joing an Elite group of just 250 marketing professionals in the U.S. who hold that designation. Ed was honored as one of New Jersey's 40 under 40 for 20069, an annual designation by NJBiz, the state's leading business publication. He also was named 2006 Outstanding Business Person of the Year by the Somerset Business Partnership. Ed is a frequent speaker on branding, marketing, advertising, and technology-driven communications. He is an Expert Speaker for Vistage International, the largest peer-to-peer learning organization for CEOs. Ed earned his BA in English from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Ed Delia is a Platinum author on EvanCarmichael.com

Ed Delia's Complete List Of Branding Articles Name Email If you enjoyed this article, get Ed Delia's Complete List of Branding Articles For FREE! More Ed Delia StoryTelling is BrandBuilding Branding The Magic Bean or Field of Dreams Branding The Competitive Edge in a Flattening World Are You a Brand Behind a Brand The Top 11 Branding Challenges Facing MidSized Companies ROI is Everything Or is it Lets Put the BS Aside For Good Your Customer Just Replaced Your CEO The Guy Who Stands Still Gets Killed First Moving Up the Perception Pyramid

When we think of examples of great creativity at work in business, whether it be a hot new product, new service model, or new type of business altogether, we often sit back and wonder, how did they do it? In many instances, it was a case of identifying a common problem and coming up with a practical solution.

Take the highly publicized success of last year’s YouTube. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim became frustrated with the problem of trying to email a video clip one evening. They developed an infrastructure for an online video sharing platform in a few hours. In February of 2005, they registered the domain www.youtube.com, launching the site to the public in May of that year. On October 9th of 2006, they sold the company to Google for an astounding $1.65 billion. And they did it without inventing a thing. No raw creativity. Which takes nothing away from their accomplishment. It just points out the power of putting two things together, in this case video clips and the internet community, to form an entirely new one…YouTube.

We call this the Fusion Factor: the blending of two entities, concepts, technologies or ideas to form something entirely new. When we take a look at the world around us, we quickly realize that many breakthrough products, services and technologies are the result of the Fusion Factor at work.

Fusion cuisine. The blending of the best culinary delights from Asian and French cultures, resulting in an entirely new dining experience.

Fusion of services. The blending of fast shipping (FedEx) with fast document output (Kinkos) to form FedEx Kinkos, and the ability to output and ship all under one roof.

For the road weary travelers, a fusion of convenience. The blending of fuel for your vehicle (Exxon) with fuel for you (Dunkin’ Donuts). Today, many Exxon stations now boast a Dunkin’ Donuts inside or adjacent to its convenience store.

If, like me, you happen to have young children in the household, you have to appreciate the home entertainment fusion of a DVD,VCR and TV into one piece of consumer electronics.

And if you’re as avid a coffee drinker as I am, you’re a fan of the fusion that Starbucks has created, integrating premium coffee with a comfortable lounge-like environment and hip music to finish it off.

We’re also seeing fusion of brand attributes: Lays Potato Chips is marketing a variety that uses Heinz Ketchup as a key ingredient. Cole Haan Shoes is marketing its use of Nike Air Technology, combining comfort with style.

Look at how far cell phone technology has come. Ten years ago, only a minority of us carried one, and most people referred to them as car phones. Today, you’re considered a dinosaur if you don’t have a cell phone that also serves up e-mail, your outlook calendar, contacts, and is capable of snapping pictures and live video. I wonder how much longer we’ll even be calling them cell phones. And now Verizon is piggybacking on the iPod phenomenon by adding MP3 capability to its new multi-media line of cell phones.

Then there’s the Web - where the Fusion Factor is the newest example of how readily the Internet world takes to breakthrough ideas.

There’s Craigslist, fusing classified ads with online access.

There’s blogging, which fuses self publishing with online publishing, opening the doors to corporate blogging and the ability for brands to establish conversational dialogues with customers in a fresh new way.

We have also seen the fusion of web connectivity and social/business networking with sites like linkedin, ecademy, myspace, fastpitch, and classmates.com.

You might think that the drivers of this technology are the technical gurus of our time - the ones that were tinkering with digital communications and the Internet before it was even called the Internet. But the shining stars guiding these people-centric Internet innovations are more like Catherine Cook. Catherine launched a site called myyearbook.com in April 2005 as a means of bringing the yearbook experience online (fusion of yearbook and web). One week after launch, 200 students signed up. Nine months later, myyearbook had one million members. According to Nielson/Net Ratings data, in the month of October 2006, the site attracted 2.4 million unique visitors. One other thing I should point out about Catherine Cook: she’s 17 years old and a student at Montgomery High School. Currently, she’s had offers by interested parties to purchase the site for numbers in the millions. Not bad for a high school student. Not bad at all.

Technology is moving at an alarming rate. Five years ago, you would be considered behind the times if you didn’t have a meaningful web presence. Today, you’re falling behind if your web presence doesn’t deliver a unique and meaningful experience for visitors, whether customers or prospects.

We’re already seeing it in our business. Ten years ago, customers would come to us and say, “We need a site.” Five years ago, “We need to improve our site.” Today, they are coming to us saying, “We need to turn our site into a profit center.”

This increased demand in online performance is what led to our fusion of branding and technology.


The process begins with an exercise in self-discovery. We ask our clients to identify the core attributes of their business, whether they are selling a product or service. Once we understand what their brand is all about, we can more easily identify meaningful ways to leverage the Internet and deliver on the core promise of their brand promise. Through the power of fusion, we can then provide customers old and new with a brand experience that moves them to take action and remain loyal.

How can the fusion of your brand’s attributes and Internet technology come together to form a brand new profit center for your company? We’ll be happy to show you. But make it sooner rather than later. The word on the street is that 2007 is going to be the year that fusion becomes the dominant factor in determining business success.

When Brands and Technology Collide Understanding the Fusion Factor - To learn more about this author, visit Ed Delia's Website.

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Kim Castle With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

Dave Kurlan Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

Stephanie Robey Stephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com   Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences.  Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website

John Brennan John Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website

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