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“I have spent years talking with brand fans; from obsessed Harley Davidson riders to young Japanese Hello Kitty admirers (one of whom, incidentally, owns more than 12,000 pieces of Hello Kitty merchandise), to devoted Irish Guinness beer drinkers. I’ve, time after time, been struck by the apparent parallels between the power of religion and of brands over followers. But, in reality, would such a claim possibly hold up? Is it possible that some brands have managed to create their own religion by, coincidently or deliberately, adopting triggers and tactics from the world of religion? The question became an obsession for me.”"
"Web 2.0 Has Seen Explosive Growth, Where's the Impact?
Facebook More about Facebook now claims over 140 million active users. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 10th largest in the world, right behind Russia and right ahead of Japan.
Yet if we were to measure the GDP of Facebook, we would come up with a negative sum. Facebook's top applications include online bumper stickers and sharing a (virtual) beer. The top business application, the Visa Business Network, has about 50,000 monthly users. In comparison, virtual beers have 5.7 million. In other words, Facebook is about wasting time. It's fun, but it's not productive. Adding Chuck Norris facts to your Facebook page or poking your friends might be entertaining, but it's not profitable.
The irony is that the Web 2.0 ethos of openness and collaboration has the potential to revolutionize business productivity ... but until the global recession hit, there was too much money available in time-wasting consumer applications to attract entrepreneurs to practical business applications. But times have changed."
"“Brand choice turns out to be a largely unconscious process,” says Tjaco Walvis, who led the one-and-a-half-year study. “But in that process, the brain behaves much like Google. It seems to use a set of rules called an algorithm to pick the brand from our memory that best and most reliably fits our functional and emotional needs at that particular moment. It behaves rationally, but in an unconscious way…”
Based on the study, Mr. Walvis concludes that the brain’s “algorithm” for brand choice has three elements.
Firstly, the brain selects the brand it has learned is best able to satisfy our biological and cultural goals. We unconsciously select the brand that is the most uniquely rewarding, based on its associations with our goals and the brain’s reward centers (e.g. the dopamine system).
Secondly, the brain selects the brand that has shown most frequently in the past that it is able to fulfill these needs. Coherent brands that repeat their promise are more likely to be chosen. Volvo, Coca-Cola and Disney are examples of coherent brands.
Thirdly, the brain selects the brand it has interacted with most intensely in the past. Brand participation creates numerous new connections in our brain, facilitating that brand’s retrieval. Nike Plus is an example of strong participation concept. [From Marketwire.]”
