In recent years, companies like T-Mobile have achieved something once thought to be legally impossible: They’ve successfully trademarked individual colours. When a colour becomes synonymous with a brand, a company can claim a certain form of "ownership" over it.

Trademarking individual colours

Under the umbrella of intellectual property law, the 3 three most common applications are:<ol><li>The trademark.</li><li>The copyright, and</li><li>The patent.</li></ol> Corporations use the trademark to protect anything integral to their brands, such as any word, name, symbol, or device that identify and distinguishes a company's good or service from its competitors.

The benefits of a trademark

Companies successfully trademarked combinations of colours, but the US Patent and Trademark Office dismissed attempts to trademark a single colour.  Arguments against issuing single colour trademarks:<ul><li>Colour depletion theory: Only around 1,867 solid Pantone colours exist. We'll run out if brands all claim a colour.</li><li>Shade confusion theory: It would be hard for consumers to differentiate between slight shade variations of colours claimed by brands.</li></ul>

For years, colour by itself did not qualify as a trademark

In the late 1950s, Owens-Corning was facing steep competition from other fibreglass insulation companies.  Owens-Corning decided to distinguish itself by infusing its product with pink dye. The company adopted the slogan "think pink" and spent tens of millions of dollars advertising the colour. In 1985, after a 5-year battle, Owens-Corning became the first company in American history to successfully trademark a colour. Ten years later, the Supreme Court ruled that colour could serve to identify a brand.

The first company in American history to successfully trademark a colour

A number of companies a have trademarked single colours. <ul><li>In 1998, Tiffany & Co. trademarked its famous blue, and UPS trademarked its “Pullman Brown.”</li><li> 3M secured its signature canary yellow colour for its Post-it notes.</li><li>Deutsche Telekom AG protected T-Mobile’s famous magenta, and Fiskars has one for orange scissor handles.</li><li>The Wiffle Ball, Inc. has a trademark on yellow for use in bats.</li><li>The University of Texas at Austin (<a href="https://www.utexas.edu/brand-guidelines/brand-identity/primary-colors">Pantone 159</a>) and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (<a href="https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/542-C">Pantone 542</a>) both have protections on their school colours.</li></ul>

How to trademark a colour

A company with a colour trademark only “owns” the colour in connection to particular goods or services.To successfully secure such a trademark, a firm must prove that a single colour:<ul><li>Achieves “secondary meaning” (distinguishes a product from competitors and identifies the company as the definitive source of the product)</li><li>It doesn’t put competitors at a disadvantage by affecting cost or quality.</li><li>It doesn’t serve a functional purpose.</li></ul>

Securing a colour trademark

Brands will go through the trouble of trademarking a colour when it is critical to the band, sales, or how the product is marketed. When a company files a trademark in black and white — the trademark is protected in all colour variations by default. So nobody can take the McDonald’s red and yellow logo, make it purple and green, and claim it as his own.

Trademarking a colour is worth the effort

A handful of companies have pushed the boundaries of intellectual property law by laying claim to individual colors.

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Marketing & Sales

business

Business

Can a corporation "own" a color?

We have always been told that good thinking is the result of reading books.
However, you can't only rely on what you know in unexpected situations. You need adaptive thinking to survive.
Adaptive thinking is the ability to recognize unexpected situations, quickly consider various possible responses, and decide on the best one. It is the ability to be logical at high speed.

Adaptive thinking

The US Navy fighter pilots were taking significant losses during the Vietnam War. This inspired the creation of the now-famous Top Gun school, which focused extensively on failing and learning from that failure. The Top Gun school taught fighters to act fast in a dangerous environment with many unknowns. Another everyday example of adaptive thinking is talking to a client. A situation can quickly evolve and throw you off balance. For example, a person asks a question you don't know the answer to. Or the conversation gets heated, and your script no longer works.

Adaptive thinking examples

Employing the power of adaptive thinking requires work and open-mindedness. The biggest hurdle that will prevent you from having a good response is not allowing your mind to wander.
To become prolific in your thinking, you need to acquire these 3 components:
<ul>
<li>Detailed planning</li>
<li>What can go wrong</li>
<li>Staying calm under pressure</li>
</ul>

Developing adaptive thinking

Plan in advance how you envision a task. For example, if you need to talk with a new client, write down everything you need to become successful. Think about all the details and imagine doing the task in your head. Runners do this before every race. They mentally go through the race and ask what will happen.

Detailed planning

The best form of planning is having a plan if things fail. But, more importantly, have a backup plan on your backup plan. Prepare for the things that can possibly go wrong to reduce the chances of failure and increase the likelihood of survival.

What can go wrong

Regardless of how carefully you plan for things that could go wrong, things will inevitably go wrong. There is something called emotional hijacking: It means that your emotions block your ability to think. Anger, fear, even positive sensation disable our ability to think clearly. When things go wrong, calmness is your best friend.

Stying calm under pressure

Developing adaptive thinking is not improving it. We also need a plan to further foster our adaptive thinking skills. The Top Gun academy turned out to be a great success because they built a library of case studies. Their air training sessions were recorded and later observed by the entire crew so that everyone knew how to respond to different situations. The skills that make a professional successful are not based on how well they know the information in textbooks but how they can handle situations based on their years of experience.

How to improve adaptive thinking

Adaptive thinking is changing your usual behaviour quickly in response to an unexpected situation. A simple strategy to follow:<ul><li>Understand the complexity of the problem you are facing</li><li>Be attentive so you can recognize immediately a change in the environment</li><li>Implement a new strategy based on the new changes with calmness.</li></ul> Become comfortable with uncomfortable situations. Understand that you can never fully prepare and there will always be something you don't know how to do.

Adaptive thinking strategy

Adaptive thinking is your ability to quickly navigate in an ever-changing environment. Learn how to harness this skill.

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Personal Development

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Problem Solving

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Leadership & Management

Adaptive Thinking: The Best Way to Deal With Unexpected Situations

<ul><li>Uniqueness helps people earn status in a group. Status matters. Ranking individuals within a hierarchy is fundamental to human social activity, and patterns of consumer behavior have closely aligned with these social calculations. </li><li>Consumers want to feel like they belong. As much as human beings love to stand out, we also love to belong. It's the irony of human behavior: toeing the line between being unique and identifying with similar others.</li><li>Reward-based brain circuitry responds to 'what could be': provide poeple with novel benefits that tickle and delight.</li></ul>

Lessons in NFT Psychology

The non-fungible tokens are all the rage, and there's a lot we can learn from the thinking and behavior that drives their fans.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

For Marketers Paying Attention, Bored Ape Is Anything But Silly or Boring. 3 Lessons in NFT Psychology, According to Behavior Science

In the most amicable of the interaction patterns, the CEO and other TMT members see eye to eye right from the start.
What would be a wise strategy in this environment? Build on this congenial atmosphere by employing rational argument and drawing others into the conversation.

The Five Types Of TMT Interactions: Congruous

This is when the CEO disagrees with the rest of the team at the beginning, and the team resolve their differences through a constructive discussion during the meeting. 
Studies show that managers can gain legitimacy by appealing to a higher authority and, again, by using rational argument to great effect.

The Five Types Of TMT Interactions: Cooperative

This is a scenario in which the CEO retreats to the background as an observer, while two team members debate an issue.
Duelling managers can bolster their case by declaring ownership (“this is my project”) and drawing on one’s experience and knowledge (“I know my team better than anyone else”). The spectating leader might be wise to delay a decision while emotions cool, as the CEOs in our study did.

The Five Types Of TMT Interactions: Spectating

This is when disagreement between the CEO and a team member triggers an adversarial dynamic at the start of a strategic issue discussion. There is a risk the decision-making process becomes polarised.
Here, participants need to be politically savvy. They can seek support, build a coalition by directly appealing or looking at colleagues, and draw on the credibility and agenda of others. A CEO could check to see if there’s scope for an upward appeal (“the founder needs this to be done before the end of next month”).

The Five Types Of TMT Interactions: Adversarial

This pattern evolves when the CEO and a TMT member are in opposition: The former challenges and undermines the latter while other members simply look on.
For those who find themselves in an undermined position, dismissed and ostracised by the team, the best chance of surviving is to duck, retreat and fight another day. In our study, one executive chose to derail the discussion, and another turned the conversation to another topic. Another magnified the risk of the rival proposal.

The Five Types Of TMT Interactions: Undermining

It is important to note that more than one constellation could form in a single meeting. Team members can be congruous or cooperative when they discuss one issue and adversarial or undermining on another.
This suggests that the TMT decision-making process is more dynamic and nuanced than shown by previous research.

Playing Your Cards Right

Interactions between the chief executive and other members of the top management team appear to follow distinct scripts. Managers who take note can boost their standing or stay out of harm’s way.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The Politics of Influence in Top Management Team Meetings

It is becoming increasingly important to curate an excellent digital employee experience right from the start of the recruitment process. HR departments are able to use digital solutions for the recruitment process, such as advertising jobs online. Video conferencing has made recruitment particularly easy. It also allows for flexible working patterns, a move away from an office, and a reduction of rent and utility costs.

Virtual recruitment is here to stay

<ul><li>A video conference call helps to see people you're screening, interviewing, or onboarding.</li><li>It helps you find remote talent and can globalise your enterprise. </li><li>Video calls are part of the digital environment. Having video calls as part of your interview will help you see how a recruit will cope.</li><li>Easier onboarding. It is easier to onboard 20 new recruits with a video conference call than to get them into a room for a couple of weeks.</li><li>Improves company culture. Arrange virtual ice-breakers or team building games to put faces to names and make real human connections.</li></ul>

The benefits of video conferencing

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Human Resources

How to Leverage Video Conferencing in Global Recruitment - The European Business Review

There is a huge difference between being virtual like many were at the start of the pandemic, and the hybrid way of working that many companies are planning for.With people split between the home and the office, companies will go from a situation where there is a single mode of communication to one where people are showing up from different locations, and potentially using different means of communication.This could easily lead to meetings becoming confusing or tip the conversation in favor of those who are physically in the room. That could mean those who work remotely are overlooked.

Remote workers in the hybrid setup

Ultimately managers have the overwhelming responsibility to create presence for everyone in the meeting, but attendees also have a responsibility to understand who is in the meeting. But regardless of who your manager is, it is important to create as much presence for yourself as possible. Keeping your camera on is an obvious basic essential.

Be engaged, even if your manager is leading

If they can, remote workers should seek out an "in-room buddy" who can act as an advocate and pull them into conversations. This could just be a fellow team member or friend who is in physical attendance.It's also important to think about how you participate. This doesn't always need to be verbal. Using features like chat or "raise hand" present in most mainstream video call apps can also help to boost your presence.

Buddy up

The "stunted" nature of virtual communication, can make it harder to read body language and other non-verbal cues.So if you're remote, let people know how you're feeling about something. Actively verbalizing your emotions can help people to better understand the intent of your message if they can't easily perceive your non-verbal cues.

Over-communicate about your emotions

How you look on screen is important. But it's not all about vanity, it's about having respect for your conversation partner.Aside from ensuring that your face is evenly illuminated, other key things to focus on are how you're framed - showing your full face and a large part of your body to ensure that people can read your body language - and to ensure that your background is not too distracting.

Make it easier for others to read you with good lighting

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Remote Work

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Corporate Culture

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Communication

How to stand out in virtual meetings

Most companies, if not all, have an HR Department that manages the workforce’s concerns. . An HRBP would need the following characteristics and skill sets to help an organization navigate the turbulent waters of interpersonal business relationships.

Qualities of a Good HR Business Partner

As HR professionals, our knowledge of labour practices and laws is our trade. We must make sure that our organization’s policies and practices meet what the law requires. This also covers the need for us to be constantly updated with the latest practices and trends in the field of HR. With this, we are armed and ready to deal with the daily challenges and future complications our organizations might face.

Knowledge and Expertise of Labor Practices and Laws

Being an hr practitioner requires you to be a master communicator. Part of the communication process involves negotiations, convincing or persuading.

Good Communication Skills

Organizational skills, metric orientation, time management, and discipline come into play when you’re an HR practitioner. To be successful in the field of Human Resources, you would need to know how to manage your time and tasks effectively as there may be days that might feel like the universe is throwing everything your way. In balancing daily activities, multi-tasking is key.

Organized

The hr Department is usually the conscience, as well as the Secret-Keeper, of an organization. Employees tend to open up to us and seek our advice on different issues and concerns. Trust is of utmost importance since employees tend to open up to us.

Ethical

HR handles various aspects involving employees. To be successful in this field, you would need to have an open-door policy; you should be approachable. You might be an expert in labor laws and other HR practices, but if you do not have strong interpersonal skills, you won’t be of any help. As HR professionals, resolving conflicts is part of the daily grind. Interpersonal skills also include being relatable and being able to relate to employees.

Interpersonal Skills

In dealing with work incidents, your personal opinion doesn’t matter; you must be objective and impartial. Possessing solid problem-solving skills is a must as you would need to apply them in numerous situations. The list above is not One-Size-Fits-All. Different organizations call for different qualities and hr professionals must learn how to be very flexible. To fit the organization’s need.

Impartial and Objective

The above quote has remained a mantra in my six-year HR career and has always been my basis in making judgments. Most companies, if not all, have an HR department (or something similar) that manages…

Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority was driven by the need to understand the crimes and atrocities done in World War II. He came to the conclusion that evil happens when people blindly obey orders and stop thinking for themselves. In this research, obedience is explained in the context of cooperation, as something a person willingly accepts.&nbsp;As cooperation is an integral part of every healthy work environment that relies on teamwork, we were curious to explore the effects of obedience on workplace and business results.

Blindly Obeying Authority

To be honest, we are not sure what exactly is authority. Very often we hear this word in different contexts — organizations, politics, parenthood, school system, everyday life. But when we ask ourselves what the meaning of this word is, we can’t give a precise definition. So, when we take a look at this word, we see a lot of different things. And that is our biggest challenge — we ask for authority, but we are not sure what authority is!

Authority Is An Unknown Entity

In Milgram’s experiment, the participants were presented with a conflict between the moral implications of the task they had (administered shocks as punishment and hurting another person), and obeying authority (listening to the orders given by the Experimenter if they would start to hesitate or refuse the task). Obedience was measured through the number of participants who went to the maximum intensity of shocks of 450 V.

Obedience and Agentic State

Obedience varied significantly depending on the context. The lowest obedience of 10% was noticed when participants saw others disobeying the experimenter and questioning his authority. Also, obedience dropped when the symbols of authority weren’t present (such as the lab coat of the experimenter) and when the authority figure wasn’t close by but giving orders by phone. Another thing that had a lot of influence on lower obedience levels was having direct contact with the person getting shocked, making participants get their hands dirtier in the process.&nbsp;

Factors that Influence Obedience

Some actions could be connected with understanding what authority means for each of us. Also, we can ask ourselves why we find it important to follow our authorities, what are the benefits of it and who our authorities are.The next step is developing our critical thinking and understanding influence. One of the interventions that can really contribute to this field is leading by example: demonstrating behaviors we want to see in our environment.

How To Prevent Mindless Obedience

Most of you know the story behind one of the most controversial experiments in social psychology — Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority. Driven to understand the crimes and atrocities…

How likely are we to blindly obey authority?

Inequality today has hit a 100 year high and billions of poor people could not realize the growth that is taking place in the world economy for decades.&nbsp;Income inequality diminishes education opportunities for the poorer and this trend keeps on widening itself from one generation to the following. It propels leverage (level of bank loans) by encouraging customers and firms to take excessive risks.&nbsp;

A Recession Is Eminent

“Richest 1% own half of the world’s wealth” according to the Guardian.People who account for 70% of the world’s working population, account for only 2.7% of global wealth. Going further into statistics, the world’s richest 500 saw their wealth increase by $1 trillion in the last year, while incomes of maximum of the lower class people remained stagnant.

Income Inequality

Technically, the indicator of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by GDP. But, let us take a deeper look into what leads to a recession, in…

ARE WE HEADING TOWARDS ANOTHER RECESSION?

Management By Wandering Around(MBWA) is a fresh approach to strengthening the bond with the team.The simple act of communicating — Emails, phone calls and meetings — can chew up huge chunks of time. What’s left goes to reports, projects and other Desk-Bound duties demanded by the needs of the business. Senior and executive managers often have schedules so tightly managed that they can’t do a Walkabout.

The Manager Walkabout

Management by walking around is a leadership tactic that dates back to the 1970s. It is a chance to see employees in action and learn more directly what they do each day. It is a way of checking on employee productivity with a surprise visit. It is a way of removing virtual management and making it more real and physical.

Why MBWA is So Useful

MBWAhas a benefit for employee morale. If a Higher-Level middle manager or senior manager does it, he or she may end up talking to staff who normally don’t see managers that high up. The manager will get to know them and their jobs better. The employees will feel that the higher-ups care about their work.

Morale boosting conversations

Management by walking around doesn’t have to be a random, unstructured or unplanned act. It can be done with a purpose that adds value to the practice. It is not about catching your employees by surprise, but to see work happen in real-time, not just in front of the screen.&nbsp;

MBWA With a Twist

<ol><li>Managing by Wandering lets the manager:</li><li>Talk to other managers along the way about important issues.</li><li>Encourage and praise employees to their faces for recent good work rather than by an impersonal email.</li><li>Get a more accurate read of what people really think from their facial expressions and body language.</li><li>Observe whether employees are working or goofing off.&nbsp;</li><li>Build stronger relationships, which is much easier to do in person than by phone or email.</li><li>Find how tasks are actually done.</li></ol>

The 6 benefits of MBWA

Effective middle managers can become more effective by learning from an old ritual of Australian aborigines. The “walkabout” was known as a rite of passage for aboriginal boys who would venture into…

Can a corporation "own" a color?

Adaptive Thinking: The Best Way to Deal With Unexpected Situations

For Marketers Paying Attention, Bored Ape Is Anything But Silly or Boring. 3 Lessons in NFT Psychology, According to Behavior Science

The Politics of Influence in Top Management Team Meetings

How to Leverage Video Conferencing in Global Recruitment - The European Business Review

Scott Jackson