Seth Godin

[from A Little Like Francisco Franco]

The number of new micro-brands is exploding. [...] If we define brand as a shortcut for a set of commercial attributes, emotions, stories, whatever, then any blogger with a following has a brand.

[...]

Doc Searls and company would have us believe that markets are conversations. This is a great conversation-starter and a useful piece of agit-prop. But the reality is that many many brands are actually monologues, not dialogues. That doesn't mean a conversation won't create a better, more robust, more useful brand. But, alas, most organizations can't handle that truth. So they do their best to do it the old way.

I said sometime last year (see here) that brands are no longer promises, as the conventional wisdom has held for so long; they are now invitations. This means that successful brands will engage markets in rich and complex dialogue, and those that don't will fail or falter.

It is true that many companies will continue on doing what makes them comfortable, even if it is ineffective. As Eric Bonabeau once said, in a very different context, ""Managers would rather live with a problem they can't solve than with a solution they don't fully understand or control."