Brand as Patterns my white paper on brand building in the digital age was nominated as one of most important innovation essays published by FastCompany. Brands as Patterns became the basis for a popular session at SXSW which was attended by over 2000 delegates.
To celebrate a decade since writing this I created brandsaspatterns.com a dedicated site adding two follow up papers investigating the Speed of The Market and Orchestrating a Business which are free to download and share.
I also developed a set of proprietary frameworks and methodologies inspired by my thinking on Brand as Patterns. The frameworks have been honed through combining and correlating the best thinking in Brand, Marketing, Experience Design, Interaction Design and Product Strategy. Building frameworks which draw from a multitude of disciplines creates better empathy between people with different skills. Forming a common language that helps drive stronger, more aligned companies.
Using these frameworks I have learnt how to create brands at the speed of the market and help clients market at the speed of their product. Using common frameworks helped companies identify patterns across their product experiences creating a more coherent experience for their customers thus Increasing levels of engagement, acquisition and retention.
Changing the sole methodology of Brand measurement from consistency to consistency and relevance (coherence) helped corporations understand that it is quite possible to be consistent and entirely irrelevant. Kodak is a great example brand that didn’t heed this warning.
PSFK asked me to follow up Brands as Patterns as a lecture. I developed a framework for understanding the cadence produced by the interrelating roadmaps of Software, Hardware, Marketing and Media.
This came from one of the many deep conversations I had with Nick Law in my time at R/GA. He used this framework to talk about how many brands are built from whats true, which could be irrelevant or uninteresting to the end user. I use it to show the value of connecting all the dots, from true to interesting.