Remember the first time you seeing some brand that, despite being shoved into your face, you still loved it?
I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay. It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.
Is it the brand? Is it the brand?
After seeing that commercial for the first time, I was obsessed about trying to re-capture that cool sensation, the excitement that makes you realize that the rules have changed and you are no closer to Kansas than Morris Blackman.
It doesn’t happen every day. I can think of only a few brands that introduced a new dimension to the way we experienced their vibes. Brands like Apple had success even way before the iPhone, Seinfeld is another one, Google search results, and of course the movie Avatar. I call these winners “Brands of the New Dimension.”
Marketers have always tried to decipher the formula for recreating Brands of the New Dimension. The truth is that sightings of such success are so rare that it’s almost impossible to recreate them. When my clients ask me what is the formula for creating a killer Brand of the New Dimension I am tempted to tell them that if I knew, I would be too busy drinking tequila on my private Island to answer their silly questions. But since I am not busy on that Island just yet, I can take a moment to point out some common denominators. And I promise not to use abstract words like “vision” or “creativity”.
Brands of the New Dimenion – What Do They Have in Common?
1. None of the Brands of the New Dimension surrender to the “me too” temptation. Instead, being so much ahead of the curve gives them the leverage to ride the wave all the way until the novelty wears out.
2. A strong business model to follow the brand’s promise must be in place. Otherwise the novelty can easily slam into a brick wall faster than you can say “altavista.”
3. Another common attribute is guts. To come up with something that has never been seen before takes balls (ask Michael Jordan). I can only imagine the creative meetings that took place at Nike during those “30 Something” days and the eyebrow raising and conviction of the gutsy executives entering a new marketing frontier.
Pursuing Brands of the New Dimension is a little like the NASA space race. The huge investment in trying to get far out has many unplanned side benefits for other brands and markets. The new technologies, the new way of looking at things . . . broadens everyone’s horizons and gives us the guts to take our own brands far and beyond.
