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Relevance is an important component of brand success; consumers need to know that the brand gets and understands them and their needs. What happens if relevance is changing at a faster pace than brands imagine? Most big brands keep track on trends and it’s widely understood that trends move at a relatively slow pace, so using the trends yardstick, brands usually feel they have time to respond.

What if they are looking at the wrong yardstick?

What if the new yardstick is conversation?

Interestingly, that’s where blog measurement tools come in. Again, most of the big brands are tracking these. However, the tend to be being used mainly by the PR and quality control departments, so they can respond to problems and crises, as and when they occur. It’s a glass half full approach. They are being used to fix problems.

Suppose they were used to find opportunities. Opportunities that allowed brands to positively enter the conversation and obtain that all-important relevance. Agencies tend to think about production schedules that stretch into weeks and months because their focus is on traditional media and even with the web, the turn around time for a decent website, is several months.

Agencies have become slaves to production and lengthy production schedules, partly because of the financial upside.

Surely, new opportunists are going to emerge that find help brands to seize the relevance. They will use shorter and lower cost production alternatives; highly topical low-cost films posted to You Tube and other video sharing sites and rich web media that’s placed precisely in the right context at precisely the right time.  





Posted by Ed Cotton Howies has an interesting article in its latest catalog, entitled "The End of Push".The article refers to a new t-shirt printing shop the company has established.

It obviously brings them greater flexibility and the ability to waste less.

The article is a micro-summary of the consumer economy; companies make stuff they believe will sell based on the best research available, then they push like hell to try and sell it.

There are always going to be gaps between what's made and what can be pushed, which is where the wastage comes in.

Howies has a new model for its t-shirts; based on limited runs and custom orders; it's designed to eliminate waste and guessing.

How much could be saved if other industries were to move to more customized and personalized production?

Could we be persuaded to wait to have things made for us?