http://www.coke.co.nz

pretty bad branding desicion to run a mixed media ad campaign with a large wave crashing on the shore dont you think?

But it’s not clear how far such fragmentation can go without completely dissipating the emotional connection users have with the brand. We are traditionalists and like Coke largely because of its comforting familiarity (remember New Coke?).

Maybe a brand like Coke should be like a public-meaning utility, providing a consistent and homogeneous image which consumers can fit in varying ways into their own stories. After all, we don’t expect the electric company to provide us with different electricity or Google to provide us with different search engines. We expect to use these homogeneous products in heterogeneous ways; it is precisely their lowest-common-denominator generic quality that makes them broadly useful.

Blogs are wonderful at exposing all of us to ideas; it’s up to each of us to “get” them.

I’m afraid Grant’s comments about Coke being “blinded by the brand” might be all too true. We know it’s extraordinarily difficult to change patterns that have yielded successful outcomes in the past, even if they no longer do so.

My opinions, worldview, and “thought process” have been expanded and sharpened beyond that I thought was possible since I started challenging myself with the thoughts of really smart people on a day-to-day basis.

Coke, and other large companies, can leverage the power of blogs to expose their entire workforce to the thoughts of the few “drivers”, “synthesists”, or whatever you want to call those really smart people who create new paradigms. I don’t think every human has it in him to be one of the “creators of new paradigms”, but constant, regular exposure should allow most people to follow.