The Kinetic Brand

In 2006 I attended the first annual Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit where I heard Dan Pink speak for the first time and I was introduced to his seminal book A Whole New Mind. In it he discusses why right-brainers will be the rulers of the future.  His book explores the six senses that the landscape of the new economy would demand: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

One year later In 2007, I would stumble across my good friend Mike Bonifer's blog, entitled "GameChangers." (he would later release his incredible book, of the same name). The blog was awesome and after discovering that he was the publicist for the brilliant movie Tron as well as the producer for the Toy Story website (the first website ever for a major motion picture), I knew I had to reach out to him.  In our conversations, Mike always brings the point home: in order for organizations to be agile, creative and even thrive in the 21st century, they can no longer follow the scripts of the industrial age. Improvisation will be the true competitive advantage.

A hop, skip and a jump, two years into the future,  I would, in a very cool way meet my friend Tali Krakowsky,  a brilliant and ferocious thinker. As former Director of Experience Design at Imaginary Forces and Wet Design, as well as a founding member of the 5D conference, Tali is pushing the envelope at the intersection of storytelling, new media and physical environments. She is on the cutting edge of business, technology and culture.  A couple of weeks ago she wrote an incredible article discussing how most brands are static and two dimensional in a world where people, customers and audiences are multi-faceted and diverse. My interpretation of her observations would be, if the marketplace were a football game with a lively and energized crowd (the customers), and what the teams on the field (the brands) each do, is run only one kind of play, the entire game. Boooooo. . . what a rip-off!

In today's market folks, whether you're right-brain thinking, improvising, or storytelling with new media, you need a kinetic brand. An identity that walks, runs, inhales, exhales, stops, assesses, regroups, sprints, jogs, thinks, entertains and if we're lucky, might even make us breakfast in bed (now that would be sweeet).

How brands existed yesteryear ladies and gentlemen, is dying.

Apple gets it. Pepsi, which ditched its Superbowl Advertising for the first time in 23 years, for its social media campaign, gets it and  Innocentive gets it. Their belief is in the "power of open innovation, bringing together creative minds to create breakthrough solutions that touch every human life." Now that's kinetic!

In today's market, where things are radically changing, we need, beauty, empathy, creativity, passion and ideas with value, that speaks to who we are. 

We need kinetic brands.

Brands that are poetry in. . .