Neglect

It is a terrible thing to neglect one’s commitment to publishing online. At first I blamed the new job. Then I blamed something else. But now I realize that I spend all my available time reading other people’s blogs, books and papers and haven’t had any remaining time to write something useful or interesting.

I also have been working on the new Designers’ Guide to Brand Strategy - which I think should be called something else this time- but that also makes it tough to write something else about brand up here. Plenty of people have been purchasing the current one, which I greatly appreciate as it is a nice reminder to continue on with the new one.

I’ve bought two new books recently, on brand stuff, which I’ve not yet read. The first being the follow up to the poor quality The Brand Gap, which is ZAG: The #1 Strategy of high-performance brands. Not wanting to judge a book by it’s author, I will be open to the possibility that this book doesn’t need to sit on the pile of other idiotic books like The Pirate Inside, and that Zag is a useful book.

The other book, Brand Innovation Manifesto, seems interesting and I’m hopefull about it. My biggest complaint is when authors complicate the space of brand, branding and brand strategy with their own flavour of the subject, in the process getting it completely wrong - and sell books on that. An interpretation of a subject matter is one thing, but most books simply missed the original point and formed their opinion on the basis of that.

Enough ranting. More tomorrow, or the next day.

2006-11-05 + plink