March 01, 2007
Branding and Innovation
Sometimes these blog posts are so easy, they practically write themselves.Or someone else writes something brilliant and I steal it. Same diff.
Today, it's Scott Berkun waxing genius on the overuse--and resulting impotence--of the word "innovation."
And it dawns on me, as I'm reading, that his insight is directly related to the word "branding."
Any of you regular readers--all two of you--will be familar with my continued ranting on the use of the word "branding." Or my complaints about the misunderstanding of the concept of branding. Or whatever. I complain. A lot. It's what I do.
Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes. Scott Berkun.
Here's what I'd like you to do. Head on over to Scott's blog and read his post entitled "How to kill innovation hype." Okay. Next, re-read it. This time replace the word "innovation" with the word "branding."
See?
And since this is especially critical for people who are trying to get help from the "branding" types, let me hit some of Scott's high-points in terms of "how to kill the branding hype":
- Challenge the word. Never allow the word to be used in conversation without asking “what do you mean by [branding]?” If it’s not clear to you as a listener how the word is being used, the speaker probably doesn’t know either: call them on it.
- Avoid compound usage. As soon as you’re throwing hyphens around you know you’re in trouble. [Branding] is a strong enough word to stand alone.
- Call bullshit. Asking for examples kills hype dead. Just say "can you show me your latest [branding effort]?" Most people that use the word don’t have examples--they don’t know what they're saying and that's why they're addicted to the [b]-word. Keep pressing and most hype-philes concede what they're doing isn't new. The fastest way to detect BS is to look at facts and at the present. True [experts] rarely need the word: they just show their work.
Labels: berkun, brand, branding, scottberkun
Branding and Innovation
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