Just taken delivery of â??The Brand Innovation Manifestoâ?? by â??John Grantâ??. Have not yet read it in full but am excited by what i’ve seen so far. A key message; that coherance and consistency are not necessarily the same thing, which articulates far more clearly the idea i’ve mentioned previously about brands having an unhealthy (and unrealistic) obsession with control through consistency.
Another key area is the acceptance of ‘web 2.0’* and everything that entails. While marketers are more than well aware of the rapidly diverging media scape, the problem comes when they try to squeeze old brand models and old ideas about marketing into these new clothes. We need to break down the artificial walls between the product/service, and the selling of that product/service. In fact, the new media democracy is a place where we need to start thinking less about ‘selling’* per se, and more about innovation.
Recommended reading. Get hold of a copy if you can.
* As an interesting footnote, I’m wondering if web 2.0 has actually had it’s day. The reason I wonder is that both it (and â??The Long Tailâ??) we’re mentioned last week on the â??The Richard & Judy Showâ??. This is surely the mark of a dying phenomena.
Thanks for that post hope the rest of the book lived up to the early promise – just thought I’d mention there’s a lively discussion of all this stuff over at my blog, be good to see you there. Lots of stuff recently on web 2.0/marketing in a networked world :J