A lot of companies get what is most important about its brand wrong. They lead with features and assume that consumers will rationally see and choose based on these data points.

The problem is that the first connection to a product or brand is emotional, not rational.

I’m reminded of that after reading that ESPN is shutting down its ESPN 3D channel by the end of 2013. There’s a reason for that: ESPN, once a pretty strong brand, gave viewers no reason to watch the channel other than the technology (i.e., the feature).

Consider this. If instead a brand claimed what was emotionally valuable about that feature – let’s say, ESPN 3D made you a more informed sports watcher – the brand would remain valuable even if a better version came along.

The risk of focusing on these rational features is that, even though they might act as very good support points to an emotional position, they are also easily claimable and replicated by competition.

Even more than that, they are easily made obsolete.

What does HBO mean to you? No doubt, it has very different permissions than it did in 1972 when the brand was founded. Think back to how far the cable channel has come from being branded Home Box Office to now causing the flood of Internet chatter after Sunday’s Games of Throne “Red Wedding” episode.

Remember its opening that featured the ultra realistic animation of the logo from the bird’s eye perspective over a dusk draped town, alighting on a middle class home and flying through the window? All the time punctuated by a most familiar tune that went da da daa, da da daa…dadaaa da, da daaaa!

Back in those days, the Home Box Office brand represented movies. We subscribed in the early days of VHS and beta tape rentals to see the movies we loved from just a few years back. It was really cool to be able to see those movies in our own homes.

There were long periods of no content too – when a placard told us what was coming up next with a minute countdown. It would read like this: Coming Next, Star Wars :23 (in 23 minutes). Movies started on the hour and they never ended exactly on the hour, so Home Box Office needed these placard inserts.

Well, this model has changed and Home Box Office is just HBO. It has movies, but what seems to drive preference is the original programing. HBO has evolved as a brand. It is not a movie channel. It is much more.

There is no winning anymore as a “first run” movie channel. In Demand owns that place. HBO has done a great job of selling the HBO acronym, transforming itself into must-have original programming that creates rabid Games of Thrones fans and engages us with a more advanced and stimulating original programing lineup.

After all, it’s not TV. It’s HBO

It looks like “House of Cards” has paid off for Netflix.

The streaming service added 2 million subscribers with that ground-breaking political series that stars Kevin Spacey.  Quite a leap from the days when Netflix was being outflanked by its competition.

It also marks a change in how Netflix will be perceived. Its brand previously was about a business model. Now its content will draw customers.

This has happened before.

Remember when TLC was The Learning Channel? Now it features shows such as “The World’s Worst Tattoos,” which are hardly educational.  Broader offerings spurred the network to simply rebrand itself as TLC.

And AMC, which a few years ago was known for airing seemingly non-stop “Die Hard” movies, now pulls in massive viewership with its gritty series lineups that include “The Walking Dead” and “Breaking Bad.” As a result, AMC’s tagline is  “Something More.”

In each instance, content drove the brand.  With “House of Cards” and other promising shows in production, look for Netflix’s brand to transform into something new.

The talk in our office lately has centered on how the streaming video industry will eventually shake out. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and many others are already available. Also in the mix are iTunes and cable on-demand channels.

Choices are a good thing for consumers. Unfortunately, there is little difference in content among the current providers. For example, most of what’s streaming on Amazon Prime is also available on Netflix.

Now we learn that Amazon is about to unveil a TV box that basically does the same thing as Apple TV, only with Amazon content. This announcement comes just days after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote an exhaustive essay that predicted television will become less about channels and more about apps.

If he’s correct, the war will be fought over content, not technology or even business model. Netflix, coming off an impressive earnings report, has the best model – subscription – but too much of its content is available elsewhere.

It won’t be long before everything will be available via streaming. Question is, which provider will dominate?

Many  of us would love to get rid of our cable TV provider.  The cost is out-of-whack high and – with the availability of digital and mobile television – cable is fast becoming irrelevant.

A Belkin and Harris survey of many disgruntled cable customers predicts that those who view at least one television show per month over the Internet will grow sharply.  The Internet-as-TV users had been chugging along at 6.9 percent growth rate, but this firm forecasts that those rates will jump to  37 percent in four years. By next year, more than half of all Internet users will be watching on Internet-capable devices.

What to do if you’re Time Warner Cable or Comcast?

Get in the game.

Time Warner Cable, for example, offers an app to watch TV channels based on subscriptions, but it limits customers to home-use only.  Beyond that, it offers no on-demand option so customers may view live shows. Worse, the number channels is limited because many networks have their own apps.

Basically, the Hulus and Netflixes of the world are grabbing market share from cable because cable television clings to an outdated model.

If the established cabled providers don’t innovate, they will fail. The upside? We’ll finally be able to cut that cable television cord.

Netflix is close, but not there yet.

Back in 2011 the king of streaming video outbid both HBO and Showtime to claim the series House Of Cards, which aired last week. The show is a gritty and well-cast drama about the nuances of politics. Produced by and starring Kevin Spacey, it’s flavored with greed, sex and betrayal and is instantly entertaining.

House of Cards would fit snugly into an HBO or Showtime lineup, which is exactly what Netflix wanted. Says Ted Sarandos, the chief content director of Netflix: “[this is the] next chapter of TV/Internet content.”

Sarandos’ goal: to make Netflix “the next HBO.”

While Netflix is smart to broaden its horizons, the desire to be the next HBO is misplaced.

Why?

The user experience on Netflix continues to be underwhelming.

Instead of looking hungrily at HBO, Netflix would be better off focusing on what makes it different and better — such as being able to offer an entirely new series all at once. These innovations should be celebrated, and they aren’t. Currently, House of Cards lacks any preview or commercial exposure to entice viewers and isn’t even highlighted on the site. Instead, it’s lumped in the “New TV” scroll along with 150 different options.

Is this how to hype a new $100 million show?

What’s more, Netflix would be wise to call its content something other than an “original series.” This banal term connotes weekly, episodic programming. But Netflix isn’t playing that kind of viewing game. Ars Technica, for example, defined House of Cards as a “thirteen-hour movie”, a description that is much more distinctive and empowering.

Little changes would make a big difference. Instead, Netflix is overly worried about its status and hanging with HBO.

Come on Netflix, if you truly want to revamp your reputation, make the necessary changes to succeed.

I was hooked on this summer’s Olympics. Despite my body’s need for sleep, I was up until midnight most nights, soaking in as many events as possible.

There is something exceptional at the core of the Olympics. After all, it’s not every day we are able to witness history.

I wasn’t alone. In fact, the London Olympics were the most-watched television event in US history. According to Nielsen’s data, 219.4 million people viewed a a portion of this summer’s Olympic coverage. NBC was smart to take live coverage to the Internet where the network found 57.1 million unique viewers. It wisely offered free smart phone and tablet applications, which gave eager viewers the chance to tune in and stay current with results.

It’s hard to find fault with NBC’s Olympic coverage from a branding perspective. The problem is, with the summer games over, NBC is finding it hard to compete with FOX’s prime-time content.

“NBC got its first taste of the difference between the Olympics and anything else it can offer in prime time: its audience Monday night dropped about 25 million from the network’s Olympic highs,” reported The New York Times.

These numbers should be a concern because it exposes NBC’s ratings spike as only due to it’s Olympic coverage, not out of brand loyalty.

Here’s why: With the enormity of the network’s viewing audience during the Olympics, there was ample commercial time to highlight upcoming prime-time content — which NBC did. Problem is, that content lacked the punch needed to keep viewers watching after the closing ceremonies.

Days later, The Times reported the gloomy news that “non-Olympic programming on NBC was beaten by Fox by 28 percent.”

Landing the London Olympics was a fancy first place prize for NBC. Yet, to follow that with subpar content like the bizarre “Stars Earn Stripes” was a huge misstep.

In short, NBC quickly returned the massive piece of share it stole from its competitors during the Olympic Games.

Maybe in four years, NBC can celebrate again, but as for now, there is hardly a reason.

Over the past month, two pieces of news have caught my attention. The first was Sony’s purchase of Gaikai, a cloud-based video game site that allows big-named game titles to be played through an Internet browser. The second was that Ouya, an inexpensive game console that runs the Android operating system and Android-based games, is teaming up with OnLive to allow cloud gaming of some AAA content.

These moves have exciting and curious implications for the market. It’s exciting to see the industry rumbling towards digital, which will lead to the instant ability to play and be simple to use.

But how will the existing brands transition?

It will be interesting to see what, if any, integration Sony has planned between Gaikai and its next Playstation. Sony puts a lot of weight behind its high-priced hardware, using it to push new technologies. But streaming services, like Gaikai, don’t require much in the way of hardware. The Ouya is set to sell for $109 and that includes the processor chips, storage, etc.,needed to run Android-based games that would be downloaded to the unit. That $109 ticket price is quite a bit less then the $599 pricetag Sony slapped on the original 60GB PS3 in 2006.

Because of Ouya’s marriage with OnLive, Sony will have to think very strategically about how it utilizes Gaikai. If the company is too soft in its approach, Ouya has an opportunity to take market share. Sony needs to be aggressive, which means stepping out of its comfort zone and leaning more towards software than hardware.

There is a happy medium. Sony can achieve profits for its system and still retain preference for its brand, but if OnLive is successful at acquiring larger amounts of AAA content, Ouya’s existence will eat away at Sony’s margins.

Sony’s best bet is to champion the digital change rather than react to it.

During an almost two-week long blackout, millions of DirecTV customers were unable to watch about a dozen popular Viacom channels, including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

The stand-off between Viacom and DirecTV over fees might have ended last week, but neither brand comes out a winner.

DirecTV was already in a tough spot. Few rave about his or her television, Internet, or cell phone provider, which means it is easy to get mad at DirectTV in this instance.

It did not matter who most pointed the finger, Viacom or DirecTV, because a lapse in service meant the service provider failed. The bright spot for DirecTV is that since all providers are viewed negatively, there is no impetus necessarily for viewers to switch. The blackout, however, did help further perpetuate a negative brand perception.

The flip side to that customer perception is the value Viacom placed on its own brand. Owners of content can thank Netflix for spotlighting just how much power they wield. Distribution once was a massive undertaking. Netflix’s DVD service was unmatched because the start-up costs for distribution of that magnitude were prohibitive. Where there was a greater dependency on physical distribution, the changing environment of digital distribution has increased control for those with the content.  I say “increased control” rather than “complete control” because content providers are not yet confident enough in their brand or their content to capitalize.

The great thing about content is that in addition to defining your market it acts as a differentiator. Make great content worth watching and customers have a reason to switch and increase usage. A good example of this is comedian Louis C.K., who avoided traditional distribution channels and sold his latest standup special digitally through his website. His success proves that, if your content is worth consuming, customers will inconvenience themselves in order to get it.

If Apple has taught us anything, it’s that there is a thriving market for simplicity – in usability, design and consumption. If ever there was an industry where simplicity was lacking, it is television. DirecTV and Viacom did little to elevate either of their brands during the recent dust-up and, in the process, demonstrated weaknesses in the system and highlighted change that might be slow but is inevitably coming.

It seems that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, is quietly in talks with cable companies in a possible attempt to add the Netflix service as an add-on to cable. The move, which would give Netflix greater reach and would give cable providers an additional bundling element in their line-up, might appear to be a win-win on paper. But the effect on the Netflix brand would not be a positive – nor is it the right step in aligning with the future of delivering content.

In any discussion I have had with friends and colleagues, I have yet to find someone who speaks highly of their cable service. The service is never great, the prices are too high, you are not able to pay only for the content you want and you have little control. In addition, cable represents the “middle man” between the creator of content and us. With streaming video (HBO GO, any one?), cable companies are nearing extinction.

Netflix was wise when it initially focused on DVDs and it was even wiser when it made the transition to instant streaming.

The biggest hurdle for Netflix is that, even though there is a lot of content it streams, the content is too incomplete. You still need to supplement Netflix with cable, satellite or another streaming service like Hulu. Its focus should be on closing this gap, not bridging it. When I go to Best Buy, I often have a hard time killing time browsing. I used to be able to that with ease. Now, though, there is just a lot of obsolete space. I have no interest in browsing the CD collection or DVD collection, which consumes most of the middle of its stores. I have seen the future in digital and have no use for hard copies anymore. This is my feeling about cable. I have tasted instant streaming, be it ESPN3, Netflix, Hulu, or iTunes, and streaming tastes oh so much better.

Apple famously is quick to do away with outdated technology before the rest of the industry (removing the diskette drive, adopting USB, avoiding Flash).  It always stays current and ahead of the curve because it is the one making the curve. (In Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs, Jobs said consumers don’t know what they want next until they have it.) Netflix must do the same. I don’t want to have another reason to remain with my cable provider. I want someone to give me a way out.

With the advent of smart TVs, game consoles, and set-top boxes, all connecting to streaming services, Netflix‘s ability to reach the market will continue to sufficiently expand without having to align with cable providers. If you lay with dogs, you will wake up with fleas. Remember this Netflix, because my cable provider is covered in them.