Here in Britain, where tobacco manufacturers expected for a decade or more that cigarette adverts would eventually be banned, their adverts became increasingly abstract. For example, each brand focused on a colour — Silk Cut on purple, Benson & Hedges on gold, Marlborough on red — so that billboard posters could be nothing more than a purple rectangle, and we, knowing consumers all, got the ad straight away. Mark Rothko, please meet Madison Avenue.

Similarly, UK cellphone company Orange (“The future’s bright, the future’s Orange.”) famously launched with a high-production-value TV advertising campaign which mentioned no product features, showed images of babies floating in space not cellphones, and gave no call to action. They were a runaway success.

Grant McCrackens blog, on marketing and the like, is full of really, really interesting stuff. Like this: an idea for a branding consultancy, that would develop brands without products. Companies in the product b…

Grant McCracken – who I had the pleasure to talk with recently – has a really interesting post on his blog about a startup idea for a consultancy that specializes in the creation of brands…brands that are product free that…