Matteo Penzo of Frog and Tim Kobe of Eight Inc had an interesting conversation about the future of brand experiences at Step Conference in Dubai last month. The majority of the discussion was centred around the future of retail — especially with the unwavering growth of e-commerce disrupting traditional brick & mortar.

The big question was: Is there a role for retail in a world where consumers can find out more about the products on display with a simple Google search than from the sales rep at the store, where they can get a better price from Amazon or Souq.com than at their local superstore and where someone (not in very distant future a package passing drone or better yet an autonomous rolling robot) will deliver it conveniently to their doorstep. …

It’s hard to believe it’s been 18 years since Cluetrain Manifesto was first published. I still remember sitting on a plane totally oblivious to my surroundings and just devouring the book. It was life changing. The most meaningful and important marketing book I have read — to this day.

It was the first time someone put the gut feeling I had into words:

That marketing and advertising should be about treating your audience like human beings, listening to them and forming real meaningful relationships with them by bringing something to the table. Not just stealing attention and time.

I’ve never had any formal education in marketing. I’ve never considered myself an ad guy. I grew up with the web creating sites & building services mostly with no advertising budget. That meant no shortcuts. We really had to understand what our audiences wanted and cared about in order to create something that got noticed, got traffic, got talked about (or “spread virally” and “earned media” using todays lingo) and was meaningful enough to become a part of their daily lives. We were building brands not knowing we were building brands. We were just following our intuition. …

I’ve always admired the way CAT has branched out from their core business of making the biggest and boldest machinery that literally shapes the Earth to clothing, footwear, mobiles phones and all the way to toys.

I’ve worn CAT boots and loved them for keeping me warm during the cold Finnish winters and more importantly giving my testosterone level a much needed boost. What they also subconsciously did was cement my image of CAT as a brand that delivers sturdy unquestionable quality.

Funny how that can change with one toy.

I have a one year old son and like any dad I could not wait to buy him toy cars, trucks, space ships — anything that I think a boy needs. I do also think boys need to play with Barbies but that’s a different story. …

Our brains have been overclocked for too long. Time to install some fans, bring down the Mhz and let the most critical resource we have in our industry breathe again.

Marketing today is a continuously evolving mashup of creativity, psychology, sociology, understanding of the latest and future trends and immensely complicated webs of interaction in an ever expanding selection of channels all aiming to affect the ever changing human psyche. That’s not easy to describe let alone work on and yet we expect our troops to be able to churn out brilliant ideas after another with little or no rest.

Subconsciously we know it’s not an equation that works but at the same time we just keep on squeezing the lemon. …

In todays connected world it’s the never ending stream of interactions that defines your brand.

Big hollow statements no longer cut it. Building a loved brand takes time and effort spent relentlessly focusing on the seemingly inconsequential and often ignored details of each interaction between you and your audience.

To embrace this consider the following.

Deliver on your promises

Are the big bold statements you are making with the majority of your marketing budget (which you should also review btw) being delivered on as your audience moves through your funnel? …

When I was in my teens I worked at a record store. It was the best and coolest summer job you could have back then. I mean this was a record store of the 90’s when CD’s had just came out, vinyl was still the thing and music was still music and you actually had to wait weeks (what!) for the physical copy of that new record by your favourite artist to arrive.

It was special then when you finally got that record, took it home and put it in your newly bought super expensive CD-player and cranked up the volume. And just sat still and listened. Listened to the whole album in one go. Not just the hit single but the whole album. And then listened to it again. Sitting still. …

The purpose of an advertising pitch is to evaluate and ultimately find the best possible creative partner for a brand. Why is it then that the whole process is designed to remove all emotional connection and real human interaction between the client and the agency peeps said client is considering working with?

I’ve worked on both sides of the fence on multimillion dollar campaigns and have learned one truth. The best creative work happens when the client and agency have an open, transparent relationship that’s based on mutual trust and respect. …

This was originally posted on my now offline blog in 2010. Thought I’d repost as it still rings true.

Imagine you live in a village sometime in the end of the 19th century.

You buy your bread from the village baker every day. You know it to be good, tasty and healthy and you know he won’t overcharge you for it. Why? Because you are close to him. You know him. His reputation in the community is linked to the quality of his bread. …