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