I started working on a project this year in response to what i found to be so many cynical and occasionally downright mean spirited Agency xmas cards. Understanding marketing and being able to sway people is a gift and a power that can either be used for good or for crap. I know which side of that equation I'd like to try to be on. And i'm with Mike, i really liked the line "the best work is not simply transactional, but an empathetic exchange of something of more import than selling a few widgets." Happy New Year Paul :)

I think you just pushed my rant button cuz I couldn't disagree with you more on this one. "If you don’t care enough to build your personal brand then why should a company employ you to create a brand for them?" the BEST marketers i know, you may not know. You know why? Because THEY ARE BUSY DOING THE WORK. And let's be clear, they are always busy. Some of the most useless marketers i know? Yeah. I bet you know them. They are really really senior. They are really really important. They have great bubble diagrams on their flikr account and they couldn't execute a go to market strategy if you paid them a million bucks and put the word innovation in their title 50 times. So while the resume is only one way to view someone -- just bc you are a great writer on a blog or are engaged actively on twitter doesn't mean squat when it comes to driving the networked marketing future. ok, rant over.

I'm just finishing up doing our brand for Gravity (my new brand : customer experience design firm - i know catchy) -- and we had talked about doing a culture book. I think it's essential for new employees and it's interesting that so few companies bother to bother. Once ours is done maybe i'll throw it up n scribed. :) Thanks for sharing this. it's a good one.

I think it's coming from a valid fear that once marketers start driving the conversations in the transmedia storytelling world that that will somehow devalue it and ruin the work itself. The concern is valid. As what we've seen with social media, marketing is filled with many people who can speak a great game, have really successful personal brands but aren't that great at the actual creation and creative process. Marketers are not by nature storytellers (no matter what their bios say). And I think the same can be said of storytellers as they are just at the forefront of understanding marketing and how to link storytelling meaningfully back to the core values of a brand. It's why its so damn fun and interesting. The rest, the debates, the fears, the judgements and the need to label those that create it, is just a bunch of white noise.

This might sound odd but I read this study this morning about divorce being contagious ( http://www.newser.com/story/94753/divorce-is-contagious.html ) and it occurred to me that what seems to be missing from the research is 'context'. Influence is often contextual and yet, very little goes on from a marketing perspective to look at that underlying context bc it's too much manual labour. Paying a fitness blogger with traffic to reco my product is far easier than finding the 100 influence health needles in my 100K chubby and guilty hay stack. And worse, even if i find a way to reach and engage those 100 influencers? If context turns out to be king, they might not work for my next go around. Clearly not sustainable.

hum... I think if it's working for you and the creative teams then it must be a good thing. Proof is always in the experience. I just caution that many of the most brilliant creative pple i know struggle with a blank canvas as much as they do a box. Maybe part of the problem is the notion of being boxed in is just the wrong metaphor. A brilliant insightful strategy isn't a box at all. It's a platform.

Love most of the post. I struggle with the neighborhoods beat networks. Not the idea that there are real people - but people are only part of a community. The power of network in my mind has been about the collective. Etsy, which Haque references a great deal in his writing, takes a local/global model that feels taken right out of environmental planning theory and sustainable development models. All of that is to say for me, that placing them in a hierarchy against each other seems like a contradiction.