I’ve said before that Brand is Bland, and ‘Blanding’ is not something that any organisation would really want to be getting in to. In terms of the four C’s, we’ve also established a preference for brand work to enable creativity rather than enforce control (Problem Solved, M Johnson, noting Channel 2 idents) and enable coherance in communication, rather than dogmatic consistency (John Grant). At the Intersections Conference this week, part of the DOTT07 festival, there have arisen some handy new slogans, with possible offbrand implications. Frans Johansson implored us to recognise that “diversity drives innovation” which is perhaps stating the obvious but important nevertheless. The interesting thing is that Brand doesn’t (usually) drive diversity, it drives conformity of thought or action, whether that be through visual identity, tone of voice, or ‘on-message’ thinking and doing by employees, so if these things hold water, a strong brand could be said to be counter-innovative. The next important question is what value you place on innovation. Tim Brown from IDEO made an interesting point about encouraging a company or organisation to have a portfolio of innovation, some very gradual and incremental, other modes cautiously experimental, and finally some radical and unabaited. A common sense approach that neatly eschews the idea that you are either innovative or not. Off or on.