Brands of the Future

New Delhi, 3rd April 2012

At one level, we all know this particular story

Ceding control

EngagementPurpose

ListeningCommunities

Collaborative

AdvocatesCrowdsourcing

Belief

Acting, not speaking

For all the thrall with which we behold change, we tend to underestimate its

sweeping power

The digital world and social media are not media evolutions, but social revolutions

The world of brands is deeply rooted in the assumptions of an earlier time, and resists

attempts at fundamental change

The brands of the future will need to be evolved around a new mental model, not just of themselves, but the world they live

in

A deeper explorationThe familiar made unfamiliar, then made

familiar againA look at some key drivers of change

The change in the dominant media form

Why is media so central?

Technologies that immortalise the mind and its output – make thoughts alive and

imperishableAllow for storage, transmission,

multiplication of ideas

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”-

McLuhan

When dominant media change, they help change everything else

• Oral= Emotion, Participation, Unity • Print= Memory, Separation, Logic• TV= Transience, Desire, Currency• Digital= ?

The digital mode

Individual minds connected & multiplied- now

DemocraticCollaborativeConnected

Simultaneous(Secondary Orality- Walter Ong)

The Increasing Focus on the Mind

The internet as playground of the mindThe body made recreational, almost vestigialA complementary virtual world with its own

codesThe new source of wealth/value creation

Shift in balance of power

New imaginations, new vocabulariesCultural flows

The Fault line

De-centralising pull of media/technology v/s centralising grip of power structures

-corporations, governments, brands

The Brand Disconnect

Imagined as a centrally controlled transmission

The ability to make people listen and actConsumers as interlopers

Brands of the Future?

Rivers, not lakes

Community owned v/s company owned

Being managed by the brand v/s Managing a brand

Brand dissolution v/s brand building

Creating a meaning surplus- more idea per square inch of thing

Sustainability = Meaning-rich /resource-poor brands

Simultaneous, seamless existence in physical and virtual spaces

Brand as truth that cannot hide v/s mask that cannot be penetrated

The brand of tomorrow needs the organisation of tomorrow

The organisation of tomorrow needs a new mental model of business

Re-integration of the market with society

“ we are primitives of an unknown culture”Gary Snyder

Thank You