Campbell on Branding and Innovation

Books in 2007

With 2008 fast approaching, I thought I’d share a list of the books I’ve read this year. I try to read one or two books a month and have a stack of 30 or so that I’ve been meaning to get to, but I always end up finding new ones that hop to the front of the line. Here’s 2007 to-date:

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Dan Pink
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
The Deviant’s Advantage by Watts Wacker
Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan
The Big Moo edited by Seth Godin
The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategy for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus
The Dip by Seth Godin
Mind Your X’s and Y’s: Satisfying the Ten Cravings of a New Generation of Consumers by Lisa Johnson
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children by John Wood

I’m currently reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, which has frameworks we’re using in our Service Design class.

What are you reading that you recommend? I’m always looking for ideas.

Thoughts on Marc Gobe’s Presentation, Part 1

Marc Gobe’s presentation during lunch today covered the importance of emotional branding using case studies from his consultancy and references from his new book, Brandjam: Humanizing Brands through Emotional Design. Toward the beginning of his presentation, he had a slide that read,

“Emotional branding is about moving from commodity to experience. Brands can create growth and relevance with consumers. Market share to mindshare.”

He provided a few examples of brands that are commodities and brands that have moved that commodity category into experience and emotion. These included Ivory soap vs. Bath & BodyWorks and Folgers vs. Starbucks.

A couple years ago I came across an AdAge article by John Battelle that basically says:

“Don’t fall victim to Old Railroad Disease - you thought you were in the train business while upstarts created new methods of transportation.”

When I read Battelle’s article I spent some time listing what I thought were Old Railroad companies (Marc’s commodity brands) and the disruptors/innovators (Marc’s experiential and emotional brands). The idea that CSX should have been UPS or Union Pacific should have become Delta.

Here is the list I made:

Corner coffee shops / Starbucks
FM radio / Sirius satellite radio
Compact discs / Apple iTunes and iPod
Ringling Bros. / Cirque du Soleil
American Airlines / JetBlue
Macy’s / Target
Hoover / Dyson
Palmolive / Method
GMC Envoy / Toyota Prius
Safeway / Whole Foods
Blockbuster / Netflix
Visa / PayPal
Allstate / Progressive
H&R Block / TurboTax

There are tons more examples. Pretty much anywhere you find large, cumbersome, risk-averse companies (just scan the Fortune 500) you’ll find natural opportunities they missed (Blockbuster and NetFlix), or outright passed on (Hoover and Dyson). What are other examples? Are they thinking they are in the train business or the transportation business? Curious what you think.