I’m a huge believer in stress-testing the expression limits of brands. And as a general rule, I’ve learned that you can push language a long way – often further than you imagined – providing you demonstrate humanity, insight, humility and fun, and you connect in ways that people identify with and find refreshing.
For me, brands, and more particularly the cultures that support them, should be seen as belief systems rather than pure-play marketing systems.
This may sound like heresy but the term “brand” has been so over used in the marketing vocabulary that it’s meaning has become – meaningless. Ask a handful of people what a brand is and you’ll get a handful of different answers. Perhaps the word brand has outlived its usefulness?
Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand building officer, proclaimed digital dead at Dmexco and urged marketers to look beyond the pipes and plumbing of digital and social media to what really matters: engaging people with creative campaigns.
There comes a point in the lifecycle of most brands when they hit critical complacency.
