No Man’s Blog

Uri is a marketing strategy consultant at Brandinstinct and one of my mentors for a long time now (you might remember his immortal 12 sins of marketing gurus post – read it again, it’s as relevant as ever).

He recently gave a talk on the future of branding. His presentation is clear, concise and refreshing in being devoid of magic formulas and hollow,overhyped buzzwords. It acknowledges the most important thing in this messy, murky reality that brands have to operate today – embrace the messiness with open, flexible arms.

One of the most important things he points at is the need for better, open relationships between all stakeholders of a ‘brand’:

Maybe because branding is positioned as a premium professional service, it tends to collect unnecessary etiquette protocols. The marketing manager leads the programme and won’t let others near it. In traditional agencies he is in contact with a relationship manager who connects him to a consultant who cannot speak to the client directly unless he is unveiled in a presentation. The consultant cannot speak to designers, because he is ‘a suit’, so he speaks to a creative director who’s versed in the way of the suit and can translate it to the gentle geniuses of the creative practices.

This absurd tradition creates a broken telephone effect and needless frustration. Those multiple translations and limitations on communication and perspective are a sure way for meaning to distort or just get lost, as well as a lot of needless political pain.

Instead, we like to see what happens when everybody interacts, knowledge shared openly and conflicting agendas used to spark creative solutions

I embedded it here for you to get a quick look but I highly recommend to visit Uri’s blog so you’ll get the full story.