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2010 is the beginning of a new era for business. We've mastered quality. Squeezed every drop out of efficiency. Saturated the marketplace with innovation. And we're using advanced information and communication technologies to reshape the very fabric of our marketplace concepts and relations.
So what's next? Certainly not "branding;" at least not in the conventional sense. The notion that a marketplace offering is a static, transactional thing that needs the right injection of cosmetics and communication to bring it to life is flawed thinking in today's environment.
Ours is an era of purpose and action. What's next are ideas and creative execution. Ideas about how to bring products and services to life in a meaningful way for the benefit of customers and the community. Ideas about how to add excitement and happiness to people's lives. Ideas about how to connect people and organizations, such that the whole is something more - and more meaningful - than the sum of its parts.
The parochial view of branding is a dangerous business concept. I hope this one-page article makes today's marketplace more clear, and incites you to seize the opportunity that's screaming in your ear. For as Sun Tzu wrote, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
Read "Branding is a Dangerous Concept (PDF)" and make 2010 your new beginning! Here's the URL:
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
Hi Tom,
I completely agree with you. Seeing branding as simplistically as we have in the past decade is pure folly. This is the best one-pager on this thought that I have ever seen :)
Posted by: Muchiri Nyaggah | January 21, 2010 at 02:45 AM
HI TOM,
This is KUNAL BORIKAR, MBA-IInd yr. Pondicherry University.
Branding is really tuff to know everything about it and it is also real that we hav squeezed everything of branding. The conventional ways of branding are old now and we have to look for new ways to brand our products.
I would like to suggest regarding SENSORY BRANDNG, why don't we go beyond traditional 5 sences of branding and think of 6th one. I think it would be the OBSERVATIONAL BRANDING where we fullfill the need of the group who having the same habbits and desire to consume the product or service.
I would like to here some words from you, and also cite a proper name to such form of branding.
Thanking You for the post.
Posted by: kunal borikar | January 21, 2010 at 09:00 AM
Thank you Muchiri and Kunal.
Kunal, let's call the new branding "passion branding." We do what we do because we love what we do and we love the people we do it for!
Posted by: Tom Asacker | January 21, 2010 at 11:00 AM