Rambling thoughts about brands and complexity

A few rambling thoughts on whether brands really follow the guru's rules... or actually emerge from complexity
Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

Jennifer’s post also quotes a reader called Patrick who emailed her thus:

I start to believe that no one really knows what works

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Waterfalls and chaos

I linked to this paper on wicked problems the other day and Chris Corrigan commented “there’s a lot in that paper eh?”. Which is true.

Medinge Moments

Just back from another extraordinary gathering at Medinge where the community that has produced Beyond Branding meets each summer. I was planning to keep this

Passion branding

Passion brands bring people together based on common interests and excitements. I’m particularly interested in ones created from the bottom up, as opposed to driven by producers concerned mainly with profit.

The volatile chemistry of trust

Interesting research from Stanford suggests that exciting brands get more trusted after making mistakes and putting them right whilst more “sincere” brands start with more trust but lose it more easily. Perhaps the sensible interpretation is that second-guessing customers can be a waste of time!

What brand are you?

Thanks to Matt Tucker at Smith Associates for telling me about What Brand Are You. It strikes me that lots of companies waste money on

Just Undo It?

The AntiBrand: blackSpot sneakers, a project by Adbusters attacks Nike directly. In doing so they take on what has become one of the great icons

Putting humanity into branding

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. People’s faith in advertising has fallen to new lows as we simply

New Abbey

So the Abbey National is rebranding itself this morning. As I write this entry, they are revealing their new look, their shortened name (just “Abbey”)

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Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

Beermat wisdom

Hugh at gapingvoid posts a great story about the dangers of “Big Idea” thinking in agencies.

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Marketing, the tragedy of the commons and cold turkey

After a panel session on Direct Marketing I wonder if we should stop looking for miracle cures for ailing brands, and instead encourage them to go cold turkey, prolong their confusion, and keep asking searching questions – to find a real sense of purpose to outlast the easy gimmickry of the admen.

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Creative destruction

A few more thoughts on the merits of creative destruction. This vid has been getting lots of hits on YouTube lately: I checked out the original song it’s based on.

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Thinking images

This blog made me think: What is the shape of thought?. It kicks off with this provocative quote: “Words and language, whether written or spoken do not seem to play