The Journey to an Iconic Brand Identity Starts From Within

‍

One of the most frequently heard mantras in modern marketing strategies is that of ‘Consumer First’, ‘Consumer is King’, ‘put the Consumer at the heart of everything’. Like every … Read the rest

What is your mental model of how mass communication works, in the context of marketing?

‍

If you have never consciously thought it through the default theory will more than likely be based on the mental model of the culture … Read the rest

A vast empirical study unpicks conventional thinking

‍

Of the ten thunders we are to explore, nine are from fields and disciplines outside marketing. This first thunder however, is a challenge from within. Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow (OUP 2010) … Read the rest

The formation of the Roman Republic is a great example of ‘the best advertising doesn’t try to persuade’. In the case of a culture this works through story and myth. Each culture has its compendium of foundational myths. They tell … Read the rest

The Era of Branding – From USPs to Cultural Associations

‍

In the Rebirth of Brand, we are using the idea of Thunder and Lightning to structure the Journey. Last week we explored the Byron Sharp’s thunder that “Advertising is … Read the rest

The iconic American agency Leo Burnett built on and added to the paradigm of red rhetoric. They too shared Kenneth Burke’s belief that the way we understand social reality is through the meaning we all attach to our environment. We … Read the rest

What we concluded from my previous post, Thunder 2 – Decision Science, is that the best way to explore the emotional is to evoke those emotions through the use of narrative stimulus (film, oral story, image, music) that evokes … Read the rest

Hugely important in 20th-century scholarship has been the “rehabilitation of myth”. The rational enlightenment movement of the 18th and 19th centuries had given the word myth a bad name. It was positioned as the reverse of the rational. It was … Read the rest

Taking the leap into the less familiar

‍

Even for those who agree with Kahneman on the importance of prioritising emotion in marketing strategies, there are frequently some important gaps in their understanding that impacts the process when briefing brand … Read the rest

It was Marshall McLuhan who described commercials as the ‘Folklore of Industrial Man’. McLuhan, like Barthes, and like his inspiration James Joyce, worked with the stuff of our everyday lives. 

Our folklore being everyday objects like soap powder, vitamins, cars, … Read the rest