Now that’s classic![unquote]

If you think that is good, you could check out Clayton Christensen talking about Milk Shakes.

B.

Re-inventing the Brand
By Jean-Noël Kapferer
Kogan Page (2001)

The book is divided up into various ‘essays’, in the same manner as Peter Drucker’s books were for instance – making them really easy to dip into. Kinda books I love, as I tend to jump around a lot. I am book promiscuous, if you care to put up with such a phrase.

The web unleashed an almost opposite idea about brands: the products and the company itself are attributes of the brand that expresses your needs. The people own the brand, in some sense.

danah said: “I’m still cranky with my favorite pretzel brand for eliminating the air bubbles in their pretzels that allowed for more salt to build up.”

Now that’s classic!

A piece of your text practically echoes what I wrote earlier this evening, i.e. “Personalization is more than skinning and moving modules around. Give me a blank slate and let me add modules that might be relevant to me. Alternatively, make some good initial guesses based on what you know about me and let me modify them from the getgo” concords perfectly with what I just wrote … about an hour ago.
(I know there’s a fine term for “oddly coincidental” … I thought “xenosynchrony” and now can’t think of it.)

(Forgive me for self-quoting … I practically never do this but the sync is astonishingly tight.)
In RWW’s “Web3.0 is About Personalization” I wrote,

“I’m going to suggest a slight refinement to “personalization” … not a contradiction, not at all, but taking a vector away from the most immediately obvious sense of “decentralized asynchronous me.”
Thinking of a typical FaceBook or MySpace page what comes to mind is, well, the all too typical DailyMe. My books, my new”friends”, rel-me rel-me rel-me or the most superficial sort.
How about s/personalization/customization … yaa, that stuff.
Why should I have to accept FaceBook’s look? MySpace trolled all sorts of activity by letting folk /really/ personalize … at least the look. Why not extend that?
Best practices of NetVibes + MySpace + FaceBook [...] And what happens in the end? Users will have in effect one seamless interface … “sites” disappear; their functionalities appear on the fully customized interface as though services.
There’s nothing http that isn’t virtual … so why the constraints? Fine, sites and companies plow a lot into design. But if they succeed in attracting users, Q: what is there about limiting the user’s abilities that leads to retention? A: nuthin’ at all. Get’em in, sign’em up, [...]“

I’ll add something in this context: information providers have to realize that the medium may be the message, but the packaging is not the product. (And if it’s otherwise then I hope they go out of business pronto.)

nice to meet you
–bentrem

Of course, the OS market specifically and the tech market in general is one where finding the “right” flavor for you requires some commitment. You can’t just smell a distro to find out if it’s right for you.

@Logical:

It’s certainly a personal choice to what extent you pay attention to brands and want that philosophy entering the industry. But I do think you’ve misunderstood the fashion brands you use as an example. You act like the products should be differentiated and the logo is an ad. The differentiation on the products IS the logo. And it’s an ad alright, but an ad for the person wearing it that they identify with (and are trying to embody) all the values that the brand reflects in their advertising and marketing. Kids aren’t buying clothes using feature comparison charts. They are buying image.

Personally, I think image and emotion can be very powerful. I think branding can be done poorly and awkwardly and be a cynical attempt to wring more dollars from an identical product, and it can be done spectacularly and build a genuine and long term relationship with an audience that is getting what they need on a practical AND an emotional level from those products.

On a personal note, we started our software startup – Jackson Fish Market – just over a year ago (www.jacksonfish.com). Our choice of name itself was a strong statement in terms of our company’s brand. Even more relevant is that every product we put out (two so far, working on a third) has it’s own distinct identity and brand. No sub-branding. It’s likely quite the opposite of most careful brand expert advice, but we intend to create dozens of brand over several years, each for it’s own small, focused software experience. We think the emotional statement of the product is just as important as the function it performs.

This thinking will probably change as brands such as Yahoo and AOL start to plateau and shift into middle age. In fact those two are probably there now.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/20

With the newer services, people would be drawn to them precisely because of the association with the google brand name. It goes back to the interface – people know what to expect with google. With the glut of products and services out there, the established brand name is an important draw to get people to try the service. A completely new brand (even if were “from the people behind ___) wouldn’t be able to do this.

Obviously there is the balancing act between diversification and keeping an eye on your core proposition, and companies may find it difficult to enforce the brand qualities to the same degree as they get larger.

On a sidenote, it would be interesting to see how the shorter shelf life of tech products interfaces with the merits and drawbacks of a completly new brand.

Best
Simon