I posted the deck for it here: http://thisisviolence.net/2010/02/10/introducti...

Any way, as you've pointed out, brands are only as static as the market and culture they exist in so treating them that way doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's nice to see other people thinking along the same lines.

One thing I think gets left out of the conversation a lot though is the critical role of analytics. Throwing out a ton of ideas without specific goals, metrics and analysis is really no better than just hoping on the hail mary. Currently, it seems that agency culture relegates analytics to the end of the process (if at all) when there is little to be done with what you learn, and even then, it's something that's viewed more as an IT thing, seperate from the creative process. I'd really like to see concepts of goals and measurement brought to the beginnings of projects, where points of measurement can be built into a program and then have the results of analysis actually impact program direction.

This is what Earls said at last October's 4As event: “It's useful for agencies to produce and deliver against them – but frankly, in a world where social influence reigns, it's less and less relevant… Do more stuff, place more bets, light more fires, give yourself more chances that at least one of your ideas takes off.”

The problem with a static brand proposition is that brands are anything but static. Brands, like people, are evolving entities that live and die by the success of their actions. So this new idea of trying a ton of things and seeing what sticks may not be such a bad idea after all. As they say, success is a poor teacher, if a brand is going to fail; it makes sense for it to “fail forward, fail fast.” But the cupcake analogy allows brands not to bet the farm on a Hail Mary.

I posted the deck for it here: http://thisisviolence.net/2010/02/10/introducti...

Any way, as you've pointed out, brands are only as static as the market and culture they exist in so treating them that way doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's nice to see other people thinking along the same lines.

One thing I think gets left out of the conversation a lot though is the critical role of analytics. Throwing out a ton of ideas without specific goals, metrics and analysis is really no better than just hoping on the hail mary. Currently, it seems that agency culture relegates analytics to the end of the process (if at all) when there is little to be done with what you learn, and even then, it's something that's viewed more as an IT thing, seperate from the creative process. I'd really like to see concepts of goals and measurement brought to the beginnings of projects, where points of measurement can be built into a program and then have the results of analysis actually impact program direction.

This is what Earls said at last October's 4As event: “It's useful for agencies to produce and deliver against them – but frankly, in a world where social influence reigns, it's less and less relevant… Do more stuff, place more bets, light more fires, give yourself more chances that at least one of your ideas takes off.”

The problem with a static brand proposition is that brands are anything but static. Brands, like people, are evolving entities that live and die by the success of their actions. So this new idea of trying a ton of things and seeing what sticks may not be such a bad idea after all. As they say, success is a poor teacher, if a brand is going to fail; it makes sense for it to “fail forward, fail fast.” But the cupcake analogy allows brands not to bet the farm on a Hail Mary.