Yesterday Ed Cotton of InfluxInsights hosted The Influx Ideas 2007 Conference. The conference was an opportunity for great minds to converge and discuss the future of branding. There were a few interesting themes that provided insight into how branding is evolving.
- Branding will become more responsible for delivering an emotional experience. "Panasonic embraced an effort to use their technology to create the first battery operated airplane. Communities became passionate about the project and the resulting PR had a tremendous impact on the brand."
- Brands will be expected to provide an all encompassing experience. "Burger King has recently created 3 Xbox games that allows kinds to be entertained while interacting with their brand."
- Brands will be required to deliver genuine value based on what their brand promises. Consumers will seek meaning in what a brand claims. "The Chysler building is a great example of a car company who created an architectural icon that uses their building design to represent the aesthetic of the car."
- Brands must provide transparent sustainability solutions by fundamentally changing practices that are counter intuitive to the green movement. "Those who survive must provide a transparent solution that reveals a commitment to environmental and social responsibility."
- Customization will allow brands to connect with their consumers. An open source approach is important; embracing a consumer's individuality, creativity and ability to innovate makes the consumer feel like the brand is more a part of who they are.
- Brands will be required to communicate with their consumers not just provide communications to them.
We had the opportunity to hear from Jonah Bloom from Ad Age, Scott Wyatt from NBBJ Architects, Sarah Rich from worldchanging.org, Christian Simm from Swiss Next, Kent Nicholas from Ask A Ninja and Gregory Kennedy from Millions of Us. Here's what they had to say:
Great speech from the Account Planners conference this year down in San Diego. His company produces house hold products, but he approached the market from a new angle. Method products are certainly design savvy; they're meant to function well and be aesthetically pleasing. His cleaners are about living healthier, something not normal grocery store cleaners don't care much about. On the most simple level, he's moved in on large companies by eating the market share of players who don't innovate. It's a great case study for doing market research and innovating.
I've been at the Planners Conference in San Diego for the past 3 days and had the opportunity to listen to some interesting and smart people. The goal was to share ideas and become a better account planner.
The seminar kicked off with a speech by Sir Ken Robinson, an enthusiastic and funny, motivational speaker. His expertise is revolutionizing the way we educate and he spoke quite eloquently about unlocking creativity. He is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. He mentioned case studies like the branding of tap water to fundraise and made comments like "it's not how intelligent you are, but rather how you are intelligent." His ending quote was "our problem isn't that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim to low and succeed."
Adam Morgan of Eatbigfish spoke about realizing opportunities and being innovative. He offered inspirational advice like Kissing the Shadow - creating an opportunity from a disadvantage, and others like being Gorilla Blind, and how to beat the Duncker Cradle Task. He expressed the tremendous value he sees in looking at micro targets to determine future needs, like for example designing products for the mainstream by looking at products needed by the disabled.
Brandon Geary of Avenue Q Razorfish spoke about how we can use web 2.0 to observing better and capitalize on consumer information that is posted on sites like Flickr, Wefeelfine and others who are the 'online entrenched.' He talked about aspirational profiling and searching out pent-up demand.
Scott Lucas of Dosage talked about why people become engaged and what to do to engage them. He referenced the "7-up" documentary and focused on the characteristics that engage, like: Scandal, coopertive communities, rituals and listed about 32 different ways people become engaged.
Ed Cotton & Aki Spicer spoke passionately about Blogging, why it's so important and how to do it successfully. They expressed the importance of using blogs to"harvesting our collective intelligence" and "helping keep us curious." It was inspirational because they showed the essence of being a planner requires soaking information in, sharing information with others in an effort to engage other and figure things out.
Yesterday Ed Cotton of InfluxInsights hosted The Influx Ideas 2007 Conference. The conference was an opportunity for great minds to converge and discuss the future of branding. There were a few interesting themes that provided insight into how branding is evolving.
