Your Brand is Your

Only Real Asset

An exploration into a pure

theory of marketing

Curt Doolittle, CEO Ascentium

Market to the Max, Seattle

March 11, 2009

Brand in a social and

economic context

What will happen after

we’ve jumped off the cliff?

Draft #1

Presented to Jean McCarthy

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008

The Castle is beautiful, but how

did it get there?

For 2000 years, the only way to raise capital

was to tax

Historically, our identities have grown out of our culture

And Our cultural identities have been based on our Myths

After World War II, Our Myths were created by Advertising

And Mass identities were created by Mass Market Brands

From the farms to the new

Eden, we all shared the

same suburban dream

Our Advertising Myths were Aspirational (though we never worried about the consequences)

And then that ordered world of

uniformity broke apart

Customer Loyalty

in the New Age

Our identities were

stolen and now its time

to get them back

Our shared common identity

was fragmented by politics,

global communication and

technology.

Even National identities began

to give way to brand identities

Brands replaced flags as symbols of new shared identities

And then, even brand identities

began to shift.

From utility to aesthetics: We started changing the

way we consume. We began to define our own brand.

Today when with the help of technology and information,

we make up our own minds, our own aesthetic.

And this individual

aesthetic we call

Micro Identities

And we become our

own brand

Brand Measurement

And the falsehood of

measuring anything else

In the world of Mass Advertising,

Metrics were easy to define.

The Explosion in technology and channels has

produced a lot more data about the brand

But there’s a big difference between data and knowledge

And knowledge only becomes an

asset when its all about the brand.

For at the end of the day,

the brand is the value

Changes in

Technology

And its impact on

Consumer behavior

Technology believes in objective Truth

Marketing believes in subjective Truth

It’s a lot harder to measure subjectivity

The world of precisely engineered machines is over

The Neuron is the tool of the future

Beyond illusion in a

Post American dream

universe

The Marketing

Organization of

the Future

The time has come to take off

the mask

And Stop being afraid of your customers

The old way to tell stories

belongs in a book

It’s not about mirrors

anymore

It’s about seeing, listening

and learning

And whomever can do that, will make a big splash

www.puretheoryofmarketing.com