“We’re only as good as our latest product,” explained Sir James. “I don’t believe in brand at all.”

A remarkable comment from someone who has stood in front of a camera for the last decade or more on behalf of creating his own eponymous brand of vacuum cleaners, and spending millions in the process.

Perhaps Sir Dyson is confused about what “brand” or “branding” really means, the term being a dumping ground for so many things: corporate identity programs, tricky advertising, the nexus of corporate manipulation and so on.

But brands are really communities of people who share approximately the same values and like to feel they belong together. These are the so-called affinity brands. Who are they? All those people who line up on the street to buy the latest iPhone (or line up online for the new iPad). Mini Cooper drivers who nod to one another at stoplights. Starbucks drinkers who stop each other on the sidewalk to ask where is the nearest Starbucks. Toyota off-road enthusiasts who blog each other about the best off-road trails, Nike runners who seek the best running routes from their hotel, designers who meet at design conferences. And so forth.

People like brands and like the feeling of being part of a collective experience, even if they don’t think of it as such. This sense of belonging is what successful brands are all about. And brands that people care about have a collection of elements that help drive that brand experience.

So perhaps Sir James’s confusion stems from the fact he doesn’t think his products add up to a brand that people care about. Let’s check off the boxes.

As many already know, powerful brands have a story about their origin. In Dyson’s case, the story is not about two guys working in a garage like Apple, but it’s close. Dyson visited a local sawmill and noticed how large cyclones removed sawdust from the air. He has even memorialized the event in film.  So, check.

Powerful brands have icons. Dyson vacuums have that iconic yellow color that makes them look childishly simple. Some have a roller ball to help them work corners more easily. They have transparent plastic holding cells that do not conceal the yucky dirt they remove. Instead, they celebrate their hard work, and show us how much dirt we’ve been living in, reminding how much they benefit us. Even Dyson himself has become an icon, as he stands face toward camera in television commercial after television commercial accenting his ingenuity and common sense engineering–reasons why we should pay hundreds of dollars more for his products.

Check.

Powerful brands have rituals. Much as Starbucks changed how we have coffee in the morning, and Ikea has changed how we interact with newly-purchased furniture, Dyson has changed the ritual of how we interact with our vacuum by handing us one that can be snapped together (or unsnapped) much like Lego blocks. The rollerball changes the way we move across the floor. The quick-open canister lets us dump right into the garbage can, rather than unleashing those nasty vacuum bags. And if you really want to get into it, there’s the ritual of innovation–and creating 5,127 prototypes, and more innovation.

Rituals? Dyson has them.

Powerful brands also have their own lexicon. That’s not a coffee, it’s an iced grande skinny decaf latte. There’s the Dyson cyclone, cylinder ball, radial root cyclone technology, triggerhead floor tool, turbine tool, Airmuscle™, Ball™ technology, Musclehead™, airblade technology. Words.

Check.

Power brands also have a group that is their opposite: the nonbelievers. Think burger wars, cola wars, Republicans versus Democrats. Mac vs. PC. Dyson himself has told us who they are. They are the old, annoying ways of doing things with vacuums, hand dryers, and so forth. Okay, check.

Brands also have a creed. Not a mission statement, but a snappy few words that tell us what they’re about. Dyson is horribly straightforward on this. Lines like, “The vacuum that doesn’t lose suction”,  “Designed to move”, and  “No clogging. No loss of suction.” Are hardly on par with “Think different.” or “Just do it.” So only a half check here.

Finally, powerful brands have a leader who set out against all odds to recreate the world according to their own vision and superior way of doing things. Sound familiar? Check.

So Dyson has all the makings of a brand. In fact, even very conservative estimates show that Sir James has spent over $20 million in television advertising alone trying to create that brand.

Brands are powerful things. When they work correctly, brands create trust, empathy, advocacy, zealotry. They create community and people feel they belong within that community. And there’s nothing like someone from the other side telling you you’re wrong to harden your beliefs (remember, it’s election year). Best of all, your advocates stick with you through bad times.

This is one of the most powerful aspects of having a brand.  When my FedEx package doesn’t arrive when I thought it should, I don’t immediately blame FedEx. Instead, I wonder, Did I make out the FedEx slip correctly? Did I check the right box? That’s because, as a member of that brand community, I trust FedEx to do what they have accepted as their charge: to deliver my package on time, as promised. All relationships are fallible elastic things, and so are brand relationships.

As a Dyson owner, I feel that I belong in the Dyson community of people who like to buy well-designed functional objects that might change the world, even if it’s only one carpet at a time. I even pay a little more to revel in that community. But here’s the thing. Have I myself been fooled by branding? Some people in our family complain the Dyson doesn’t work right, or doesn’t clean as well as the old vacuum. I get defensive and say they must be doing something wrong. And even in those between times when I roll out the Dyson for myself and see it’s not sucking up cat hair the way our old vacuum seemed to without hesitation, well, I think I must be doing something wrong. After all, it has great design. And it costs so much, it must be better. 5,127 prototypes can’t be wrong.

Right?

Or maybe the Dyson vacuum just isn’t better after all. Perhaps it’s simply the illusion of paying for an expensively designed vacuum that makes it seem better.

If others feel the way I do, Sir James had better hope that, despite the fact that “brand” is the only word outlawed in his company, that the millions he’s spent effectively creating a brand will save him.

As for myself, I’ll think about it some more. Probably the next time I go shopping for a new vacuum.

Having spent the last decade and more shopping for designers like Philippe Starck and Michael Graves, the new Target video reveals the company has gone micro-niche, picking up edgy trendsmart shops from Miami to SF—and plugging these mini boxes inside the larger Target retail box.

The video gives us snapshots of Target store’s new “The Shops” boutique concept, and features The Webster from Miami, The Privet House from Warren, Connecticut, Boston’s Polka Dog Bakery, the candy store from SF, and cosmetics boutique The Cos Bar from Charleston, South Carolina. Sound bites of plucky entrepreneurs reveal their dreamsoul and how Target is now bringing “a piece of the boutique experience to Target.”

Despite touting newness, Target is uncharacteristically behind the curve on this concept, which commercial real estate developers have already seized upon to counter shopping mall blandness. Look at Boston’s Newbury Street, Chelsea Market in Manhattan and Santa Monica Place in California.

Nevertheless, Target knows how to do it right. If the concept takes off with consumers, we can look forward to more boutiques, more categories, and more accent in Tar-zhay. It’s also likely that we’ll see less successful boutiques rotating on and off Target retail floors faster than last season’s garments.

As The Privet House’s Suzanne declares in the video, “Watch what you ask for when you want your hobby to become your living!”

The Coke videos (there are two of them: Video One and Video Two) which can be seen on YouTube reveal Coke’s new comprehensive “liquid” marketing strategy. With splashes of Henry Jenkins’ spreadable media concept, experiential marketing, Sir Ken Robinson’s whiteboard execution and Coke’s sophisticated marketing aplomb, the videos take us on a discovery that is as startling as it is revelatory.

While other companies are covering off on some (or much) of the thinking Coke lays out for viewers, Coke shows what happens when—with one of the world’s largest marketing budgets—you can do it all.

What is most surprising during the nearly eighteen viewing minutes is how willfully the soft drink marketer peels back the layers of their organization to reveal what’s been working and what hasn’t. As Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice-President, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at The Coca-Cola Company exclaims how the soft drink marketer will transform “one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling” and “from consumer insights to provocations” thus potentially adding value and significance to people’s lives, he also reveals the positioning architecture for all products and other information that (even in our WikiLeaks world) is usually left behind the corporate firewall. Suddenly, it’s all chunked down for everyone to see, including consumers.

What is most resonant about these videos is how both Target and Coke have once more claimed innovative category leadership—a challenge both companies always rise to. And the see-thru character of their narratives demonstrates just how far storytelling can go.

Think Target vs. Kmart. Coke vs. Pepsi. Dunkin’ vs. Starbucks. These paradoxical forces are excellent handholds to remind each brand of the “other”—and there is power in understanding who we do not want to become. The values and goals of competitors can help us define our own vision—not by imitation, but by competitively declaring ourselves as the other.

When Steve Jobs declared over a decade ago that he would not lower Apple computer pricing to meet competition from Dell (and other low-priced) computers, he set a stake in the ground that did not just impact short-term goals. Job’s declaration that price-cutting would be a “slow race to the bottom” became forward vision responsible (in part) for AAPL’s ultimate success.

JCP has taken time for introspection lately and also decided what they are NOT—lately leaving the Kohl’s, Herbergers, Dillards, Sears, and others behind.

The contrast provides insight and opportunity. And it also solidifies the beliefs of your brand zealots. It’s election year, and there’s nothing like a Democrat telling a Republican why they are wrong (or vice versa) to help solidify the beliefs of both parties. The same is true ofStarbucks/Dunkin’ Donuts, Coke/Pepsi, Nike/Adidas, Ford/Chevrolet and other brands.

Understanding what you are not and never want to become also influences execution and tactics.

For a time, Women’s Wear Daily on Twitter showed that nearly 2 million people followed the fashion mag tweets. But how many people did WWD follow?

No one.

Only recently has WWD started following other haute leaders like NY Times, Marc Jacobs, Yves St Laurent, Vogue, Dior, Chanel…defining themselves by the company they keep–definitively not @whatahick.

A brilliant way of differentiating themselves, establishing leadership, and still not stumbling on the runway.

In today’s head-spinning flat transmedia world, consumers can Friend, Like, Link, chat, review, tweet, download, play, ping, poke, yak, Yelp and otherwise connect with brands and each other any way they choose. And somewhere along the way (marketers hope) people find time to buy.

As we hear ad nauseum, the citizen is in control. Well, perhaps not so much not so much in control, as they are immersed in a digital downpour splintered across hundreds of different channels, drenched in a media bombardment that demands constant oversight. (Watch this. No, this! Did you read my tweet? You have to see this!!) In a media environment that seems to be refreshed every six weeks, changes abound. Angry Birds has been replaced by (or supplemented with) WordsWithFriends. Kony2012 became contagious within hours (what, you mean haven’t seen it!??). Smartphones make awareness, decision-making and purchase intent simultaneous right in the store aisle.

One need only remember that while movies were invented in the 1890s, it took until 1927 for “The Jazz Singer” to link film and sound (and another dozen years for color), to get a parallel sense of what our journey may be like moving forward through the datacloud.

The need for expertly integrated marketing is greater than ever, as marketers challenge themselves with creating a social imprint. When the social citizen is open and available 24/7/365 you’re either there, or you risk falling short of today’s expectations of what it means to be a brand in our all antennae-up bitstreaming world.

Push media is still needed to create brand awareness and purchase intent—but media agencies are finding it harder to achieve reach from one program (or even one platform) alone.  Pull media like advertising is still critical to tell your brand story the way you want it told. Becoming a portal through owned media is also not a standalone solution.

So all the tubes must be open to provide push and pull and portal. Media drives social, and social drives media.

“This is just where the business is headed,” reports Claudia Cahill chief content officer of Content Collective, part of Omnicom’s OMD Group. The business unit is about custom media and content deals.

“There is tremendous opportunity and learning trying to figure out what makes sense for brands,” says Cahill. “We have moved from a one-way conversation to a two-way dialogue. It’s an amorphous, complicated space right now,” she admits. “Because there are so many ways to think about it.”

It doesn’t take Aristotle to understand that dialogue offers the opportunity to persuade. And the way in, is content. Done smartly, brand communications are no longer an interruption. Instead, your brand becomes the content.

“Smart companies understand today that good content—with an editorially-driven mindset, can be effective for driving positive customer engagements,” says Steve Rubel, executive vice president of global strategy and insights at Edelman Public Relations.

“The opportunity today is a media cloverleaf that spans tablets, cell phones, computers and televisions,” reports Rubel, and planning your narrative across different media channels is key. According to Edelman global research, 63% of people need to hear things three to five times across different media channels before it sinks in and overcomes skepticism. (In Singapore, that figure is higher at 70%—it’s even higher in Japan, at 82%.)

“You have to think about how a story unfolds with enough repetition to stick into people’s minds,” says Rubel. “Content is a key way to do that and both brands and agencies are now putting money behind it.”

The line between hard content and straight entertainment is softening. Communications (a.k.a advertising) used to be laden with hardboiled features and benefits, humor used to be acceptable only for unserious products like chips, beer, pizza, and (somehow) FedEx spots. But rarely elsewhere.

“Today there’s a blurring line between entertainment and news. Conservative companies need to understand that,” says Rubel.

If our transmedia world demands that we be present in all media 24/7/365, it goes without saying that you cannot submit your socialized consumers to a stentorian drone of product/service features and benefits. The mashup of consumer touchpoints across the media cloverleaf and beyond (including out of home media, traditional print, packaging, brand experiences, and more) dictates that you hit and low together, but in different media.

What holds it all together is a carefully thought out strategy for your narrative. “You need to have a larger brand narrative than just about what you’re trying to sell,” counsels Rubel. “You must have a higher order thing to talk about.”

How do you find your narrative? Remember that your brand is really a community of people who share your brand values. They believe what you believe. And because they believe, advocates share a communal sense of belonging. Your brand becomes a source of content for that community (and for potential zealots wanting to join your community).

“It’s the consumer’s choice how and when to seek out a brand,” says Joel Rubinson, former head of research at the Advertising Research Foundation and president of Rubinson Partners, Inc. “They do so only if you stand for values and lifestyle choices that transcend your [product’s] molecules. Starbucks isn’t just coffee, it’s the third place. Whole Foods isn’t just a grocery store, it is the supply point for a wellness lifestyle. Brand as portal is the heart of contemporary marketing. If they lose this, they lose everything.”

Marketers need to connect to values that transcend functional aspects (better, faster, cheaper, more powerful) and connect to the popular zeitgeist. This doesn’t mean rushing to the latest/greatest social media tweak. Your real social imprint creates a high order strategic link between corporate values (and the products or services you have to offer) and socialized consumer desires.

Quick examples. Beinggirl.com from Tampax answers the overarching challenges of a girl becoming a woman. Weightwatchers is a community of strength to help manage weight and its forum helps peers guide one another through this shared challenge. Threadless serves up crowd-generated designer streetwear with a heavy backdrop of social values.

The emotive touchpoints for these very different ideals are delivered through retail experiences, social media, websites, as well as blogs, tweets, and other output from their advocates’ mediastream. The community of people who agree, admire and share those values turn to the brand portal for ideas, positive reinforcement and to connect with others who share their attitudes and beliefs.

Your brand becomes a portal that generates content that helps celebrate your ideal, and becomes a destination. Those who share your values and belong to your brand community also buy products along the way.

And as Tampax and Weightwatchers suggest, you don’t have to be a 21^st century start-up company to participate.

Kraftrecipes.com is a longstanding concept that has moved successfully to social media. Their eponymous site enjoys over 12 million visits per month, and they report over 800,000 fans on Facebook (Kraft individual brands mentioned in recipes also have tens of millions of fans on their respective Facebook pages).  The Kraftrecipes.com strategy has been to maintain platforms and marketing channels they know drive engagement through content.

“We’ve been creating amazing content for the last 15 years,” says Jennifer Feeley, associate director of consumer relationship marketing at Kraft. “It has always been deeply important for us to provide consumers with food solutions they feel good about. What is changing are the technologies—the platforms, the greater connectivity and consumer empowerment.”

Recipes inherently include Kraft brand names so they become a form of advertorial—which has always been about content first, advertising second.  Back in the stamp and postcard era, women (mostly) sent their family recipes to Kraft. “Consumer recipes used to go into a file,” laments Feeley. “Now they can share their voice and give recommendations. We curate that over earned and borrowed channels, and provide a consistent consumer experience.” The key in content marketing is to understand what consumers truly want, what their needs are, and deliver it in the time and place of their choice.

“We use data a lot better these days,” asserts Feeley. “To understand consumer needs, what their behaviors are, how to deliver great content and connective media. Having the data drive the technology enables us to deliver better content and communications. I would also say that our capabilities have deepened in order to prove out ROI on what we do,” she adds.

To that end, Kraft uses Neilsen, Google data, Cannondale shopper data, as well as their own deep consumer database to understand what people are clicking, where they engage in a time-spent perspective, meshed with learning derived from other platforms (e.g. Kraft sponsored magazines, traditional advertising stats, and other sources).

“We capitalize on the borrowed platforms that others are creating, interface with popular bloggers, and make sure that our content through all borrowed and earned marketing channels have that ongoing consumer and marketing relationship,” says Feeley.

The content has been re-framed and socialized in the minds of consumers so that it is more than a recipe share-out—it is a celebration point for members of the Kraft community. If the website was just a catalog of Kraft products, it would not attract over 12 million visits per month.

“[Media] has evolved from being advertising that pushes awareness of your brand,” adds Feeley. “Or pulling consumers into the store for promotions and point of purchase and tasting events. We try to deliver the right message at the right time in the right way. You really need all three to be compelling and differentiated.”

“Our clients see things now from a much more holistic perspective,” adds OMD’s Cahill. “It’s not media alone, it’s very strategy driven. It’s creative thinking that then drives the [media] transaction—today it’s ideation first, transaction second.”

Cahill points to their expansive Pepsi X-Factor project, which served up a 360-degree communications chart that drove everything from real-time red carpet glam-cam, to Times Square events, Facebook, a Super Bowl spot (and more). But at the heart of it was Pepsi’s mission to recreate and entrench their position as pop star. Along the way, everything they did (in some way) answered the question, What can Pepsi do to enhance the audience experience? Creating messages that actually entertain—beyond simple product placement, is new to most marketers.  And despite Pepsi’s incredible success, weaving media across channels can be a challenge.

“You might spend a lot of money on an effort and it may not pay out,” warns Edelman’s Steve Rubel. “You want an Avatar, not an Ishtar.”

Every brand’s opportunity today is not only to win the purchase moment, but to widen and deepen the relationship with millions of social citizens across time and circumstance. This means mastering not only your brand’s narrative strategy, but levers of push, pull, and portal when (and if) the brand is clever enough to do so. Our new transmedia channels allow you to steer the dialogue toward your differentiated reason for being, why your company started, your brand icons, the rites of use for your product or service —and the opportunity to weave in new consumer benefits, include new promotions, line extensions, brand experiences and other efforts.

Learning your three P’s and turning brand into content may be one of the most exciting opportunities

Many have the talent to be great designers, but few have the energy. Most people want to be with their friends, home with their families, they want to go to the club, the recital, The Hamptons. The result is forgettable effluvia flattened beneath the steamroller of low attention spans.

It is good to remember that while you are doing your laundry, someone else is still working. This may be enforced paranoia, but so be it. Great design is better than having a social life.

Whether you design cars or packaging, clothing or environments, graphics, experiences, or systems, it is important to know basics like divine proportion, the grid, and Who the hell are Geo Ponti, Abbot Miller, and Masamichi Katayama, anyway?

But it is even more important to recognize and understand the larger world of ideas.

And I don’t mean design ideas. I mean the big, gaping, cosmic world of ideas. Plato, Descartes, Derrida, pick your own apples.

We learn what has been done for two reasons. First, to know what it is and that it exists. And we want to know who did it. Designers are descended from a long and legendary legacy of craft, technique and talent. Great designers make their work such an improvement over what has been, that no one remembers the former.

Second, we want to what has been done because we want to know how it was done. Design is not just about coming up with ideas, it is about getting ideas produced. The great works of art and design would not have made it to public display except for the expertise of engineers, draftsmen, and craftpersons from a spectrum of disciplines. In that sense, you must not only create ideas but you must help figure out how to produce and implement them. Even industries that are very high gloss are, at the same time, very blue collar. You have to get your hands dirty.

You are part of a long and continuous line of designers who understood that design thinking created things that people (not just other designers) desired to enrich their lives. A partial list includes Vitruvius, Raymond Loewy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Coco Chanel, Herb Lubalin, Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, and lately Zaha Hadid, Paula Scher, Marc Jacobs, Stefan Sagmeister, Richard Meier, Fred Woodward, Chip Kidd, Jean Nouvel, and others. Know them. Then crush them.

Most of all, understand the designer’s unique ability to make the humble spectacular. Think of the simple spoon. Now think of a Georg Jensen spoon. Think of a house, then think of “Falling Water”. When I lived in Europe, I noticed a series of bank posters on the advertising kiosks. They were magnificent. Simple, bold statements that were visual Superglue. I thought, “That’s what I want to do!” It was 30 years before I realized those posters were the work of a German designer named Gunter Rambow.

Thousands of designers flock to work for Apple, Nike, Shepard Fairey, Louis Vuitton, Karim Rashid, or some other gestalt that has already been created. The opportunity, though, lies in creating something spectacular for a brand, a client, a category that has not been realized. A company or product that does not have an image, who has not set millions of tongues wagging. Yet.

Service the neglected, they will be grateful for your attention.

There are rules in design, every iconic designer has some. Learn what they are, then shatter them. Shatter this rule. The world is not simply what has been presented to you. There are ideas everywhere that have not been imagined yet. Great design lives in the cosmos of what is possible, and has not yet been created. This is the challenge/opportunity whether you are designing a new flying ship, package design, or tagging a brick wall.

How was Gunter Rambow able to take an idea for a goddamn bank and make it so compelling?

One answer.

He gave a damn.

This is the changing scape of retail, as shoppers drift online seeking bargains and lower prices, especially along the commoditized aisles of consumer electronics, footwear and appliances.

Quantity, quality, and low prices have been the raison d’etre for modern retailers—features nulled by the Internet’s own ubiquity and easy parking via Barcalounger.

But the Internet isn’t the total future. “Sometimes I just have to get out of the house!” cries one Chicagoland woman.

But “getting out” in itself isn’t enough for today’s shopper, and the death rattle at Sears should shake up any retailer. Malls used to be fat, drippy cultures featuring all that was sparkly, good and exciting in the world. Aisles were soaked in dopamine wonder and mall rats scurried from store to store, leaving only when security guards booted them out. Today, those vast hallways have become skinny monocultures with equal doses of DSW, H&M, Victoria Secret, Lucky Jeans, Zara and Sbarro from Ocean City to Oceanside.

Numbed by the mega square-footage of “big box” stores and sales staffs resigned to uncaring, shoppers today are seeking more dynamic experiences.

Property developer Jamestown, based in Atlanta, understands that it’s not just plug and play anymore. “Malls have become a uniform experience,” explains Michael Phillips, chief operating officer of Jamestown, a developer based in Atlanta, Georgia. Jamestown boasts dynamic retail concepts like Chelsea Market in Manhattan and Boston’s Newbury Street, among others. “The successes will be those who deconstruct that model.”

Reshaping shopping experiences is important because, as consumers, we have been reshaped. Today, we experience high-end design at both ends of the retail chain (from Tiffany to Target), so we demand more unique products and experiences. “The woman who shops at Saks shops at Target,” says Phillips. “They shop high and low together.”

Jamestown’s strategy is to be locally focused and nationally anchored. “For consumers to be compelled to come more often, you need to provide them with a dimensional shopping environment,” advises Phillips. “It’s essential to have the artist and start-up retailer next to the highly polished national retailer.”

As retailers try to dodge the consumer death ray of indifference and zipped pocketbooks, they’re trying new things.

Walgreen’s new flagship store on its original 1926 site at the corner of State and Randolph in downtown Chicago, does for drugstores what “Star Wars” did for movies.

In a blockbuster effort to restyle their approach, Walgreen’s has abandoned

the dumbed-down esthetics of floor-to-ceiling merchandise or furniture barn glare, and uses a variety of lighting styles to signal to shoppers that they are entering new experiences.

Packaged goods are enhanced by lumens designed into the underside of store shelves. Lighting in the Nail Spa has all the allure of a Sephora. Gone are the days of the overhead uniglow.

The Virtual Makeover video kiosk lets women try on cosmetics (without the trial of messy “used” cosmetics) and a Nail Bar goes even further to promote Walgreens’ cosmetics cred.

As merchants and developers try to chop away messy bits of retail gangrene, it’s good to remind ourselves that times have changed since Moms and Dads stared with glossy-eyed wonder at rows of TVs, washing machines and Tide at bargain prices.

In today’s times, plenitude and pricing alone grow wearisome, and conjure up no more excitement than the name Wannamaker might. We can shuffle through the aisles of amazon.com, Tar-zhay, and a streaming river of other stores both real and virtual.  It’s not just about products or prices or experiences alone in the real world. It’s about the kismet of brain-smacking “stand in place” WTF transformations.

Developers and retailers like Sears, Best Buy, and JCPenney must remember not only Target’s internal mantra that Speed is life. But also that, while we are counseled to fit in, we celebrate those who stand out.

Whereas taking a short-term gig may have been viewed as a sideways or even downward move once upon a time, today many professionals—and the companies who hire them—are seeing the advantages of an untethered work force that buzzes in and out of companies, moving from project to project, cross-pollinating ideas (and companies) as they go. As a result, this new breed of “pollinators” has become one of the most dynamic and innovative segments of our workforce.

“Companies are either culturally for using external consultants,” says Nicole Ertas, a pollinator living in the Seattle area. “Or they feel it’s demoralizing for their internal culture and prefer to have everything happen internally.”

Like Ertas, Pollinators may have been in “Top 40 Under 40” lists, or recently moved to a new city. They may be young college graduates trying to eke out their place in corporate America. Or they may be experienced mid-level practitioners desiring to opt out of corporate cube culture. Whether their background is in fashion, beverage, health and wellness, financial, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, sales, technology or elsewhere, they’re carrying a bigger basket of experience in their backpack wherever they go.

“Being an independent consultant allows us invaluable experience,” says Denmark Francisco, a 28-year old in interactive media and digital marketing strategy. Francisco moved recently from Manhattan to Hong Kong for a project, and claims that moving from project to project builds an experience and knowledge base he would not get at a single job. “I get a chance to see what really works in the market,” says Francisco. “There may be variables in a situation,” he adds, “but there are also similarities. We transfer what we know has worked.”

As companies run pell-mell to find innovative ideas for new products, services, and new ways of doing business. Within the bounds of nondisclosure agreements, these Pollinators are helping make organizations use external talent intelligently to be more innovative, more competitive, and less stuck in “this is how we do it here” silos.

“You can’t use external talent to do something an employee is supposed to be doing,” advises Ertas, who has worked on- and off-staff at big brands like S.C. Johnson, Jim Beam, Wrigley, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and others. “Instead, companies hire us short term to solve the problem and then get out.”

Pollinating is a platform that allows people to share and let everybody grow, while extracting the golden honey called ideas.

Does it work?

“Absolutely,” says Mitra Best, who is pioneering innovation as US innovation leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm does not have an exact number for outside hires, but the impact is significant. “We bring in catalyst hires to bolster thinking in an area.” One of those hires founded their Health Information Technology practice. “He brought in ways of solving problems that were very different,” says Best.

Being different is not always good for its own sake, but being different can send the rockets of innovation soaring.

“If you put people who think similarly together, the chance of coming up with new ideas keeps diminishing,” says Best. “If you want to accelerate new thinking, you put people from different perspectives together. Apply different filters to the same problem, and you get huge results.”

“The experience is exponential,” agrees pollinator Ertas. “The more brands and situations you’re challenged with, the more you’re going to have in your arsenal on how to handle challenges and opportunities. Unless you have people who have exposure to that breadth, you’re going to be limited in what you consider for innovation. You might be considering line extension, when you should be doing a channel overhaul.”

Pollinators can also help spread the love. Externals are often allowed access to other business units and upper management that regular staffers don’t get, due to internal hierarchies. “We talk to everybody in the company, from to lowest to highest,” says Francisco. “So it helps us understand the various perspectives within the organization. Staffers don’t get that opportunity because they’re stuck in their role or cube all day.” For example, most places treat analytics and creativity separately, marketing is doing one thing and IT is doing another. “We can help bring those disciplines together,” says Francisco.

Another perspective is that brand managers are so immersed in their brand, they see everything through that lens. Pollinators, however, see the world through the lens of the consumer. That consumer has a multitude of needs beyond a single brand: food and beverage needs, fashion, health care and financial problems. When the brand manager is looking through the eyes of the brand, they may get to solutions, but they may not get there as quickly or take that left turn that creates dramatic results.

From outside to inside to outside and back again creates a boisterous dynamic.

Situations, projects, categories, companies, challenges and opportunities are all different. People who are working cross-functionally are going to be accelerators of innovation, thanks to their spectrum of experience. “Whereas the traditional manager may work on three brands over a couple years,” agrees Ertas, “the cross-pollinator works on a dozen or more categories, products, or channels and is exposed to so many challenges, categories, brands/products in different life stages, different channels—sometimes at the same time.”

A Pollinator who has worked both sides of the fence adds, “If a company wants to get best of breed from concept to market,  they can bring in a fabulous innovator, then contract a fabulous executor. Then, finally, someone who is very smart about market tactics and commercialization. Traditionally, companies try to get brand managers to engage in all three functions but, in reality, these are all very different practices.”

But being a Pollinator is not all blue skies. Although they are noticeable (or just notorious) in their luxe eyeglass frames, Starbucks and backpacks, Pollinators are brought in to work quickly. It is a concentrated blend of hard work, long hours, and ultimately high risk. “You’re usually working for C-suite clients,” says a Pollinator. “And at that level, they just want to get the work done.” If you fail, you fail completely.

There’s also the soft tissue stuff about being a stranger in a strange land.  “Not every place is fun to work,” says one person who remains anonymous. “The management, the structure, sometimes the culture is not a good fit for your mindset.”

Outsiders can unwittingly step on toes. “We’re not trained on processes inside the company itself, which can be super challenging,” says one expert. “Sometimes it’s just the paperwork to get things done—estimates and invoicing. How do you fit into their established practices? We don’t have to play the politics.”

Pollinators can also be local. Case in point Ted Souder, head of industry and part of the retail pod at Google. Souder was sent from his Chicago base to Paris, where he gained experience in new markets including Africa and the Middle East. “Paris was extra exciting,” says Souder, “because I didn’t know anyone and didn’t speak French—which is as outside the comfort zone as you can get.”

As a catalyst for global diversity, innovation and community, Google has innovated a program for people to take on new roles in other geographies, so they can expand their skills and bring back ideas from other parts of the world. (In other words, pollinators.)

“I spent a year in Europe and the Middle East and I switched verticals,” says Souder. “That gives me a whole new perspective that others at my level don’t necessarily have. The opportunity now is to bring back what I saw people doing in Europe. I think it’s going make our U.S. team more effective.”

Example? “In the U.S. we tend to be a bit more forward in our approach about selling—more pushy,” says Souder.  “In Europe it’s more about developing relationships—people buy because of the relationship they have with their partner. We can learn from that.”

“Right now we’re in the midst of the acceleration of everything,” says Google retail industry director Julie Krueger. “We have a globally diverse audience, so we need an internal culture that is constantly innovating, learning, sharing. At Google, we are vertically structured into travel, retail, finance, health care. What happens over time is that you can get stuck in your vertical.

“But that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from someone in finance or health. They might have come up with a phenomenal solution—and if everyone doesn’t hear about it, that’s a problem. We have to share best practices internally between geographies. Even with over thirty thousand employees, we’ll eventually become a smaller company because of the relationships that are being developed.”

This, of course, is why we hire new people in ordinary times: to extract their fresh thinking before they get mired in office dogma. But in extraordinary times such as these, the old mantra, “we hire geniuses and fire fools” wears thin. Big can become bland and sometimes it needs a poke.

Mitra Best at PwC agrees. “We have so many areas of expertise, it is very possible that you can come in and not touch any other part of the company,” she says. “One of our missions is to develop initiatives that bring together people from different areas of the firm so they can cross-pollinate.”

When PwC recently acquired two strong consulting firms, instead of allowing headhunters to come pick off their best people in the change cycle, PwC worked hard to integrate the two cultures. “Blending those diverse cultures has made us a more fertile environment,” says Best. “And [adds] more value to our clients.” Which is why they merged in the first place.

The downside of the recent economic layoffs is that that well-trained, experienced individuals have been let loose into the workforce. The upside is that these people are buzzing with knowledge and experience now available to everyone. Their influx is forming a dynamic that is accelerating rapid, positive change. “This is a very volatile time,” says PwC’s Mitra Best. “You can only meet the challenges if you are innovating,”

“If you’re not in it, you’re just reading about it,” concludes Ertas. “You really have to be in it.”

“Great minds do not think alike,” says Chief Operating Officer Susan Cantor. “We make sure we bring in fresh perspectives, exciting minds and personalities. It’s less like a think tank and more like a running stream of ideas. The key is to make it relevant to the client’s problem and opportunity.”

These spontaneous inspiration tanks have included Robyn Waters, former head of design at Target stores. Craig Tanimoto, the creator of Apple’s famous “Think different” advertising campaign. Punk Marketing co-author Mark Simmons, award-winning furniture designer Paul James, “The Ten Faces Of Innovation” author Jonathon Littman, IDEO alum Scott Underwood, and a roving troupe of social anthropologists, cultural enthographers, trend spotters, research analysts, graphic designers, urban planners, innovation experts, stylists, retail experientialists, cool hunters, forensic researchers, futurists and more.

“Clients do not like having to rely on the same tired faces,” says Cantor. “The flexibility of bringing in top minds to look at their specific challenge or opportunity—even bringing people they usually only read about—is exciting. The energy level goes up and everyone brings more to the table.”

“The perspective Thinktopia brings to the ideation sessions—and the expertise of their experts creates a rich atmosphere from which to create ideas,” remarks Tiffany Stroupe, a former Manager of Consumer Insights at Taco Bell who now works at Hyundai. “I love the way these guys think!”

Bringing in front page talent is just one way Thinktopia adds brain power—they also encourage teams to seek out brainwaves within their own company. “We make a practice of suggesting that brand teams bring in others from product R&D, finance, national sales, operations, even store managers,” says Cantor. “All these people may work together functionally, but rarely are they ever in the same room together. Except perhaps at the Holiday Party.”

This so-called “Medici effect” (coined in a book by Frans Johansson) combined with Thinktopia’s own proprietary process, permits key stakeholders to look at their products and services in completely new ways.

“We are accustomed to looking at big open categories like wellness, payments, trends, and the shifting tectonics of today’s marketplace,” says Thinktopia ceo and founder, Patrick Hanlon. “When we launch new products and re-engineer existing ones, our goal is to build community around these products and services.

“That community begins inside the company first, before it ever goes out to the consumer. If you don’t believe in your product or service, you’ll never be able to convince your customers—let alone upper management. Bringing in fresh perspectives, even people from other categories or disciplines, not only helps put a different lens on things. It helps shape that community.”

The results are revelatory and actionable. The outcomes can be new products, new distribution models, new packaging, communications ideas and, best of all, a new vision and refreshed brand narrative that moves the team forward.

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never figure out how to get there,” concludes Cantor.

Even from the beginning, the imported car company struggled to find a narrative. Quirky, eccentric, yet nonetheless adroit at finding enough niche to eke out its existence, the car became the darling of an intelligentsia willing to forgive the brand its shortcomings and create a brand narrative for the car on their own. The product became, by default, a thinking person’s car. The company’s owners, from SAAB to General Motors, to the thin vapors of financing from both the Swedish government and Chinese investors, were less forgiving and brought the company to a screeching halt.

But there’s a lesson we can all remind ourselves from Saab’s sad demise. Namely, a brand that cannot sit across from a buyer (whether a consumer, or buyer at Walmart or Target) and tell them where they’re from, what they’re about (how they’re differentiated), what identifies them in the market, how they’re used, the language they use that surrounds their community, what they’re not and never want to become, and who’s steering the way—they will ultimately fail. Saab’s lifespan from 1947 to 2011 is not as long as Levi’s, Kraft, or even its auto import counterpart VW, which is still rolling.

Founded in 1947, SAAB was an acronym for Swedish Airplane AB, a company that manufactured airplanes. While every advertising agency that handled Saab created some advertisement that featured jets (one had a Saab car racing a Saab aircraft down the jetway), it was not until Lowe NYC created their “Born from jets” line that Saab’s origins started to gain traction.

While we may scoff at seeing historical footage of Mercedes, Porsche and Chevrolet on the world’s speedways, or crusty black and white film of Henry Ford inside his factory, the creation myth is the foundation of meaning. It is an inherent human desire to know where things come from. If you want to be my friend, I need to know where you’re from.

The tagline “Born from jets” differentiated Saab in a parking lot already filled with automobiles in pursuit of perfection, ultimate driving machines, and cars engineered like no other cars in the world. In a four-wheeled ecosystem with over 500 choices to choose from, any positioning born from a brand truth is a treasure to cling to. Sadly, finally achieving their unique differentiation was too little, too late for Saab. General Motors management had lost interest in their exotic imported lines, and was already making plans to shed itself of the whole lot.

What originally signified Saabs on the street was their unique, black design. Saab styling continued to stand out on the street, until General Motors co-opted Saab design by mainstreaming it into the GM design catalog. The ignition system was quirky, too. The key was on the transmission deck, not altogether practical (beware the Starbucks that slopped in there) but unique. Like the rebirth of VW, Chrysler, Cooper Mini and others, the brand might have benefitted from having some renowned state-of-the-car designers (e.g. J. Mays) on its lot.

Saab performance was and is exceptional. (Frankly, sitting in a Saab Turbo does achieve thrill status when pedal meets metal: the car is born from jets.) Although handling is not as tight as a BMW, the car has spirit. (Running footage was shot not on Mt. Tamalpais like most car manufacturers, but on the back highways of South Africa.) If this had been recognized and pushed 20 years ago, instead of quirkiness, the brand might have had a chance of surviving today.

(There’s also an unsubstantiated rumor that, in Sweden, Saab stands for safety. Not Volvo. Rumor has it, Volvo envied Saab’s positioning enough to transport the concept to the U.S., flanking its home rival.)

Although adjectives like quirky, eccentric, odd, do not mainstream make, it is the responsibility of every brand to understand not only who they are, but who they are not and never want to become. The brand could have expanded its appeal by seizing both what it is, with some insights into consumer desire. Crushing the two together is where the juice is.

It is easy to stand back and whisper what might have been in hindsight. But it is also easy to forget that marketers not only have a responsibility for day-to-day sales, but to the longer perspective of how brands become (and remain) meaningful to their consumers. Identifying and incorporating brand legacy, brand values, brand assets, brand personality and a long-term vision for the brand—and keeping those elements current, relevant, and vital are the foundation of responsible brand management.

What this really adds up to is that Saab was never a brand at all. Its marketers never seized hold of what the car was, why it existed, or what its brand assets or brand personality were. Its management created no vision, never really seized upon an overarching brand experience. And because the car held no real meaning for consumers, and no reason for being, it ceased to be.

SAAB. 1947-2011. R.I.P.