I had a great conversation yesterday with the chief executive of Interbrand, a leading global brand consultancy, we came to the same conclusion that brand strategy consulting is at an exciting cross-road. We agreed that the basic concept of brand strategy itself is only 15 years old at most and that it’s still evolving. It was great talking to someone that not only has the passion but can deeply understand what it means. We fully agreed that the competitive front today is all about “customer engagement management”.
In the world of hyper-competition and proliferation of everything, organizations need to build strong brands more than ever. But it is getting more and more difficult as brand loyalty is declining and at the same time it costs a lot more to launch a new brand. It’s hard to imagine the ROI.
Finally, we’re going to begin our Masterclass next week. I received many emails from people who wanted to confirm the start date as well as the program details. This virtual course assumes that participants have a good understanding of marketing, the internet, as well as some knowledge of brand management. The whole idea is to democratize professional knowledge, making the best resources available to more people who need it for their job. With new free tools online, like blogs, Wikipedia , Facebook, del.icio.us, and YouTube, we are about to join in something new. It is an absolute first.
Open Source Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass - STARTING NEXT WEEK - REGISTRATION OPEN - SEE BELOW
The course will not provide basic branding concepts or background of brand management such as the Proctor & Gamble model that was developed in the late 1930s (Branding 1.0). Instead we will focus on clarifying the myths of branding and looking at them through the lens of web 2.0 as control over brand messages or even meaning is gradually moving away from brand stewards and edging closer toward consumers. Imagine Disney blogging about its characters, Apple about its next products, or Sony about product recall. It could very well help them get closer to consumers by reaching out to the core fan communities. Exploiting this avenue requires smart thinking and a firm commitment.
The course will span eight weeks and I will divide the three day workshop material into eight presentations. I will post questions around these topics will find a volunteer moderator every week. Participants will post comments and their most important point of views. They should challenge others and be prepared to be challenged. I will look for volunteers every week to consolidate the ideas that were discussed and put it into a presentation format which I will post on this blog. I’ll leave it open the participants, if they want to continue the current discussion here and bring that to another place to further extend the topic with others. I think we should use our debates to update Wikipedia and use Facebook to create our own special interest community. I will need some help here, since as you know I’m in the middle of starting up an web 2.0 strategic innovation and incubation consultancy, so a lot of the content or activities will be participant-generated. In true Web 2.0 fashion.
Finally, to the most interesting part, will have the final session which will spark a dialogue on how a company can respond to the challenges posed by web 2.0 and the whole extreme consumerin-control movement. I hope all of us can collectively create a deliverable in the form of a deck and maybe create a short video clip on YouTube. Or we can create multiple versions of the deck depending on the appetite of the participants. That will conclude the program.
Here are the program details:
Week One - What is a Brand? Introducing brand taxonomies.
Week Two – Managing brand meanings
Week Three- Developing luxury brands
Week Four- Developing brand architecture
Week Five- Developing brand strategy (part 1)
Week Six – Developing brand strategy (part 2)
Week Seven – Managing global brands
Week Eight - Branding for the future –Responding to the challenges
Week Nine to Ten- participants develop joint deliverable(s)
For those who have not registered, registration is simple, Just click on registraton below and leave a message there.
BTW if you have missed the piece on branding by our contributing blooger Mark Ury a few weeks back, you should check that out. It is a really good piece.
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