Other people 'Love Change' Too

I have found what I think I could almost say is the bible of my blog. Gareth Kay over at Brand New has a post on the professional radicals . Which is talking about the old days of HHCL. He states how they were really ahead of their time. Reading through a booklet the guys put together entitled Marketing at a point of change. It really covers a lot of things that we all still struggle with today.

I find it hard to believe this great piece, that was written 15 odd years ago, hasn’t spread into the market and somewhat changed how people work in marketing. I think worst part is that not even small parts of it have made it into a textbook for marketing university degrees . Thank god for the new open source world. Gareth and Russell please make sure it does not get taken down. There are so many things in here that we all talk about on a daily basis. I always think there is some genius in people that can take all the different elements that we all discuss and put it in one defining piece. (in other words planners are geniuses)

I just have to pull out a few lines

'When everything becomes a like there is no longer rational basis for choice, information doesn’t help me anymore'

I think I have this conversation at least twice a week. Welcome to a world of product parity. I think Borat looks at it quite well - MOVIE and so did Greg Nugent at the APG Big Thinking event with his 57 varieties of who gives a f%&k.

Another line that is great is

'Dont expect them to sit and listen, get them to take part'

I think this was way before our world of myspace, youtube, facebook, flickr and every other shared site. It talks well to the world of content creation and the audiences 'keeness to appropriate and affect'

'You'll buy a brand not just to have a product but to belong to a club'

I was backpacking with a guy I met whilst travelling. He had an iRiver and was against iPods. He believed the iRiver was a better product. I tried to explain that people buy into being apart of something cool. Its an icon that shows other people something about them or how they want to be seen. I pretty much said ‘I bought it because I buy into the bullsh!t of how cool the brand is and I think it makes me cooler by having it’. We argued about it for a week as he thought I was full of sh!t. His view of brands was that they just gave a level of quality and trust in the product. That people didn’t love brands as a way of expressing themselves. I guess I was being open just to gage a reaction. It worked.

I realise a lot of this has been around for a while. Its just scary to think how much we have lost our way. Its sad to see this history somewhat lost on a good agency. I guess its up to the new open source world and some of the smaller agencies to start to turn clients and the bigger agencies into more intelligent marketers.

Reading more blogs might be a start