energy

There are some things coming together which I think are adding up to an interesting and useful way to approach brands.

There's John's enthusiasm thoughts (and here), which maybe relate to the Y&R Brand Asset Valuator ideas of Brand Energy - as Mark pointed out. And you can see it developing through Mark McGuinness's thoughts about Enthusiasm vs Confidence. I know Mark's talking about people not brands but I always used to hate seeing 'confident' in a list of brand values on a creative brief or somewhere. It didn't seem to tell you anything useful. Enthusiastic seems much better - because it demands to be tied to something - enthusiastic about what?

And maybe the 'enthusiastic about what?' question is answered by Richard's Brand Idea model. And with all that energy and enthusiasm safely directed then maybe deploying a stream of ideas makes some sort of sense (which is like John's molecule but with some added energy and direction). 

This is what I like about the blogosphere, some useful new thoughts can be spun up very quickly without being co-opted by proprietary agency methodologies. And this energy/enthusiasm thing hasn't solidified yet, but it's going somewhere good.

Comments

[John Dodds]

I don't know why, but this immediately brings to mind the contrast between "fast & dirty" and "slow & considered".

While the latter will often come across as manufactured artifice in a fast evolving world, the former might just reek of insightful intuiton because, if you're truly invested in what you're doing, fast does not have to mean superficial. Indeed, we all know that over-analysis is more likely to lead to the superficial as the interesting edges are shaved off.

All of this ties in with the research debate that has bubbled along at coffee mornings and elsewhere and the fact that today we can more easily test ideas in the real world, see what works and what doesn't and not worry that it's irreversible.

Borrowing from Mark McGuiness, it's all about what the users think of the "brand" not what the brand thinks of itself.