Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

 I love it when a major-league players like Jack and Suzy Welch weigh-in with realistic takes on marketing.  In their column in the Dec. 03 Business Week, entitled How to Really Shake Things Up, (second item) they add resonance to one of my shop’s battle cries: Ideas sell.  Always have, always will.  There are tons of math in the marketing process today, or, as Welch and Welch put it, “…data mining, number-slicing and niche-segmenting…”  But – it’s still about The Big Idea, as trite as the expression has become.  From Taco Bell’s freebies in the wake of the World Series, to the furniture giveaway in Boston, giving people reasons to buy is the core definition of marketing at its best.