Archive for 2 September, 2010
Brand (not so) New Brand Thinking
I’m currently reading Brand New Brand Thinking
Although it was written in 2002 (so doesn’t really cover the whole digital thing), it contains some lovely and useful nuggets.
I’ve skimmed through so far (it is slightly heavy going in places), but I particularly liked Mark Earl’s analogy of a brand as open source software – users are encouraged to evolve the basic concept, giving them some benefit and then they hopefully pass it on to others to do the same.
There are also some great caveats about the role of market research from John Cronk ‘Like the weather forecast: you’ve got to take it into account, but you can’t trust it’ and Merry Baskin ‘research does not make decisions, it demands interpretation and thought’.
Merry also suggests in her chapter changing client’s business cards from ‘Brand Manager’ to ‘blender of some of the brand stimuli that make up a brand’s character’, which for something written eight years ago is amazingly relevant.
cartoon by Tom Fishburne (link is to a great post of his on this topic)
