Marketing and tech people seem to be thinking about the same problems from different directions. As business = brand = experience, there is a need to think holistically about how to continue to be meaningful to customers, sharing learnings from both areas (and more).
Brands need to be managed in an increasingly agile way as competition, offers and communications evolve more rapidly in the market. In just a few short years Borders and Barnes & Noble have come under severe pressure from Amazon and digital publishing. If they had managed to recognise and pivot sooner, managing their business in an agile way, the story could be a lot different today.
And increasingly the notion of brand experience is becoming closer to user experience.
Agile branding, as I see it, blends the theory and practice of both brand and agile to create sustainable businesses. It's being fast, and true.
What it is not: only about online marketing.
This blog is an exploration of this idea to help people begin to practice agile branding - getting it right for customers and saving endless resources currently occupied with activities that don't actually make a difference to the customer.
I'm definitely no expert, so I really would appreciate your thoughts and advice along the way. My plan is to share materials on brand, agile, lean and combinations of them all in a hopefully useful way.
For now, here's my starting point:
A: The agile manifesto
(A)B: The sharp, insightful work on brand by Marty Neumeier that still holds true: The Brand Gap
AB: The fabulous, experience-based method for managing creative projects proposed by Danny Somekh, called Agile Branding and Creative Development (ABCD!)
AB: The Lean Start up
AB: Lean Start Up tools and huge amounts of useful and inspiring advice, tools and people: Steve Blank's blog
You? Where would you point to as a starter pack for agile branding?
Photo credit: Jonathan Lucas Photography
