...and I discovered Tom Fishburne

People Buy Brands Like They Make Friends

This morning I came across an interesting article on brandchannel.com -People Buy Brands Like They Make Friends. The article proposes an alternative perspective on brand relationship as a 'friend', the bond is still strong and emotional based on a reciprocal relationship of trust and familiarity.

Some of the top lines from the article:

• Every action associated with a brand (products, advertising, events) has implications for brand friendship.
• Just like our friends, brands shape our experiences. They show up at work, at home, and everywhere in between.
• People have one great love story, if they’re lucky, but they will form several strong friendships.
• Brand just like friends could play any number of roles viz. Builder, Companion, Connector, Collaborator, Energizer, Mind Opener, Navigator, and Champion.
• Brand needs to build - TRUST, INFLUENCE, SELF-IDENTIFICATION, SHARED ACTIVITY & EVOLUTION.

Innovation is socialistic

My first car was a used Audi I bought from another student on campus. The car died a very quick and painful death, not much to expect from a student car that cost $1500? My next car was downgrade or so I thought from an Audi to a Subaru. Although the Subaru lacked the cache of the Audi and several of the features it drove well and lasted a while. As life moved on my affordability for cars meandered through many different value cars, that lacked the features, gadgets and gizmos. Between my income level and the time span, innovation drove down costs to the point that my very last value car came with the same gadgets as my premium student car from over 8 years ago.

Innovation is socialistic constantly making things easy and affordable for the masses! Shrinking lifecycles and creating renewed challenges by commoditizing the product. Branding is the only sustained solution to compete in a ‘me too’ world.

Brand proposes innovation disposes.

Marketer the demigod?

I have been interested in Osho’s philosophies for several years now. I remember listening to a segment where Osho hypothesized the drivers of Friedrich Nietzsche’s fate. Osho believed the reason Nietzsche went mad (although medical reason was syphilis) because he did not believe in god! The logic was described somewhat along the lines of, god is the source of hope to most normal people. That makes god the datum! The baseline, essentially after we put in our best it is god/fate/destiny that delivers our share of success or failure. So if one did not believe in god there would be no baseline and no hope? Nietzche went into a free fall and went mad.

We as marketers provide that ‘HOPE’ in modern society. Our consumers, are merely clusters of goals, aspirations and desires. We help associate and infuse desire into our brands we develop and manage, the portfolios of these brands into ‘esteemed’ to ‘good to have’. In an ever evolving world we create social structure. The social structure creates the framework of the cultural socio economics that is reflected in owning a BMW or a Kia and owning a Patek Phillippe or a timex.

Disagreement is the mother of ideation!

We have often read “Need is the mother of invention”, years ago I heard from a mentor “Demand is the father of imitation and innovation is the other woman”. My contribution to these axioms is that, Disagreement is the mother of ideation!

Recently during a conversation I mentioned to a couple colleagues I do not enjoyed working with people who cannot handle disagreement. I came from a culture where disagreement is often construed as disrespect. People often feel violated and resort to guilt tripping. Just imagine running a business where the top guy is either heavy handed or leveraging guilt to get his or her point, it would be a pretty difficult place to survive.

I have always believed anytime an individual confuses disagreement for disrespect, it short circuits the intellectual process. It takes a lot of self confidence to be able to accept and handle multiple points of view with ease and comfort. As a strategist one needs to be able to accept as many points of view as the number of people in a room. Anytime this requirement fails, it is obvious to me the organization has the wrong set of people or a poorly crafted reward system.

Since I believe Disagreement is the mother of ideation, the mercurial the staff the better the pipeline of ideas. It all starts at the widest end of the hopper until it converges based on style, structure, systems, staff, values skills and strategy (the McKinsey 7S model) into a single directed stream line of action!