I see the word “leading” used all the time to describe organsations. Nearly always it means that the company is not the biggest in its sector but desperately needs us to believe it is important.
Interestingly, the word “leading” has another definition (pronounced ledd-ing) – from printing, where it stands for extra empty space between lines of type.
When I read about a “leading company” I can’t help thinking of that meaningless empty space…
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.
I’m experimenting with marketing less and listening more
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.
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
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!
Michael Hammer’s new book, The Agenda, is about the rise of customer power. But is customer-centricity really such a good model for business and society?
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
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
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
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”)
Rob Paterson reports on NPR’s approach to developing a new morning show for a younger audience. The traditional stance would be to do their best to design in house the
Catherine at The F Word reviews the advertising imagery she encounters travelling around London. It’s fascinating. This was spotted by Mike at Londonist who comments It makes for interesting reading.
Jack/Zen posts his four laws of networks. I particularly liked his first “Luck = consciousness x transparency”. He explainsLuck is one of the most powerful and accessible currencies in networks
There’s a lot of creative energy in failure, if you don’t take it too seriously. Here are some of the out-takes from our recent video shoot. In some ways it
