Glossary

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This glossary provides definitions and description of concept of particular names, words or combinations used in this blog.

Cross-Culture (C+C)

Cross-culture look beyond boundaries between market segments, common values, common priorities, genders, nations, generations, social status, sub-cultural tribes, alternative industries and traditional approaches to gather, analyze & fragments verbal, visual & intangible elements to discover surprising congruences, invisible alliances or interesting contrasts.

The cross-cultural findings generate a strategy called “Blue Ocean”, redefining market classifications & consumer approaches.

Tactically, the strategy produce a “Brand Scenario”, a “Fractal Identity System” & “brand capsules”. The brand scenario is a narrative play-book, describing the entire strategy in terms of time, actions & effects.

Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy (defined in the book written by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne) is an alternative marketing approach to the most common “red ocean” bloody marketplace. The red ocean is the existing marketplace, where everything is considered in terms of market share, competitive positioning & differentiation. The blue ocean represent the market place that do not exist yet, until someone creates it, by reconstructing market boundaries & defining a new price for value system.

In recent years, successful blue ocean strategies have shown spectacular results such as Nintendo’s Wii, Yellow Tail Wine, or Docomo’s I-mode service.

Fractal Identity System

In the mid-90’s, when internet was in infancy, “fractal branding” meant something like “infinite self replicating visual identity”. The concept was quickly forgotten. Now with internet & the capacity to download, link, report & replicate, whatever seems interesting, fractal branding hold a new meaning.

A Fractal Identity System, is a codified, ultra compressed, visual, verbal & digital elements, capable to recall an identity instantly regardless of the environment: Google text link ads composition on blogs, MS Word’s time laps of a blinking cursor, typewriting of a name (del.icio.us). All these tiny “digital street corners” can be systematically designed & strategically implemented to articulate an identity throughout the user experience, without the intrusiveness of a logo or a tag-line.

A Fractal Identity System is a flexible, mobile & organic approach of reconsidering the monolithically stagnant “Corporate Identity System”. Before internet, identity elements could only be found, “stamped” in well framed space such as shops, headquarters, TV screens & magazines. Computers & internet allows a brand to be ubiquitous & interactive. Almost all the major player of the popular digital world, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Yahoo take full advantage of this environment, they, themselves, generated.

Brand Capsule

Brand capsules represents the cast of a branding strategy (scenario) operating within an audience’s familiar cultural environment, relevant & literate to his or her own personal identity. The scenario focuses on solving or understanding needs, desire or contradictions felt by popular consumer tribes.

A brand capsule can be a name, a logo, a sound, an interface, a statement, an image, a small piece of software, a video clip, a simple ceremony... anything instant & easy to experience, easy to remember & easy to transfer, reproduce or broadcast toward another individual by word of mouth or word of mouse.

The capsule’s container is the brand identity. The content is an “ideavirus” performing the symbolic & relevant answer to a need, a desire or soothing an cultural anxiety, an audience is struggling with.

Ideavirus

Seth Godin’s book “Unleashing the Ideavirus” created the term. An ideavirus is an idea worth communicating to your acquaintances.

If the symbolic message contained in the ideavirus touches a need, a desire or sooth an internal conflict & if your brand is “culturally literate”... trust, recognition & loyalty can ensue.

Using internet’s high & free propagation rates (viral broadcasting), an ideavirus packaged as a brand capsule becomes a meaningful & “feelingful” vessel of identity among potential consumers.

Branding

A brand is a company or product persona. We expect brands to behave like decent human being & we like them, like friends when they represent a significant part of our personal cultural identity.

Good brands travel light.