As a help to brand planners everywhere, Gareth Kay, Director of Brand Strategy at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, has offered up 10 “little ideas” on his blog.
Here they are:
- #10 – be interesting, not right
- #9 – get obsessed by games
- #8 – be a magazine editor
- #7 – break the tyranny of the big idea
- #6 – get out of the messaging business
- #5 – turn data in to meaning
- #4 – be people powered
- #3 – be recombinant
- #2 – more generalists, fewer specialists
- #1 – two heads are better than one
Each little idea is supported by a full blog post. Each one is well worth reading.
To support his 10th point, Kay draws on a terrific quote from Bill Bernbach.
“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.”
In other words, no matter how fast media changes, the art of persuasion is timeless. It’s a subject I addressed last night on Bonehook.com.