How can that be tapped by brands and what’s the most essential element in this saturated world?

• Be different to what’s been done as Timberland demonstrated
• Be principled like Disney, but not too uptight
• Be heroic with a validated opinion that charts a new course for business e.g., Nike
• Be known for being remarkable as is Apple
• Be followed like Coke
• Be sustainable and fresh like Patagonia
• Be a challenger of the rule like you.

Breaking the frame is the common thread that generates shareability. We needn’t be surprised nor challenged by it, especially when one considers their own ‘rock n roll’ lifestream.

Understanding how and what the brain thinks when considering brands and their associations; your Kellogg’s Cornflakes will chirp when you’ve got the morning blues?

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.

The technique reported in PLoS Biology relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients’ brains.

Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.

The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.

Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts.

In a 2011 study, participants with electrodes in direct brain contact were able to move a cursor on a screen by simply thinking of vowel sounds.

A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to track blood flow in the brain has shown promise for identifying which words or ideas someone may be thinking about.

By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant’s group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of – recreating “movies in the mind”.

All in the mind

Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that “stimulus reconstruction” work one step further.

“This is inspired by a lot of Jack’s work,” Dr Pasley said. “One question was… how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach?”

The team focused on an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus, or STG.

This broad region is not just part of the hearing apparatus but one of the “higher-order” brain regions that help us make linguistic sense of the sounds we hear.

The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences.

The trick is disentangling the chaos of electrical signals that the audio brought about in the patients’ STG regions.

To do that, the team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played.

With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen.

They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.

“There’s a two-pronged nature of this work – one is the basic science of how the brain does things,” said Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study.

“From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders… could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can’t speak but they can imagine what they want to say,” Prof Knight explained.

“The patients are giving us this data, so it’d be nice if we gave something back to them eventually.”

The authors caution that the thought-translation idea is still to be vastly improved before such prosthetics become a reality.

But the benefits of such devices could be transformative, said Mindy McCumber, a speech-language pathologist at Florida Hospital in Orlando.

“As a therapist, I can see potential implications for the restoration of communication for a wide range of disorders,” she told BBC News.

“The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise ‘augmentative and alternative communication’, and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means.”

Here are a few things to keep in mind. You have most of them in play (for now):

Keep on being heroic
Keep on being different to how it’s been done
Keep on being principled
Keep on being fresh
Keep on being followed
Keep on being a challenger to the rule.

Here’s what they New York Times said this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/technology/when-twitter-blocks-tweets-its-outrage.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

What assumptions am I making that I don’t know I’m making? I’ve witnessed many ‘locked-down’ changes and developments from Twitter; controlling this, not allowing that, etc. Has freedom run off a cliff? When Twitter began, founder, Biz Stone said, “It’s like we’re on a rocket ship that we were just painting and suddenly it took off and we’re holding onto the ship with our finger nails.”

Twitter has been famously restless, garrulous and extroverted with a short attention span and a profound aversion to the status quo. Could it become desecrated, unoriginal, normalized and downtrodden as it chases to capture local markets that have the dexterity of gook and the personalities of ash?

Shame on you Twitter for grovelling at the sphincter of politically correct left wing and politically extreme right wing shibboleths. In other words, please be coaxed from your somnolence and find the right balance between sobriety and persuasiveness – there’s a good bird. Here’s how to fly on the right course:

Keep on being heroic
Keep on being different to how it’s been done
Keep on being principled
Keep on being fresh
Keep on being followed
Keep on being a challenger to the rule.

Word of mouth is the number one influencer of purchases and consequently interface plays a key role in our ‘social sharing’ way of life. Therefore, is interface design becoming more important than a brand’s core identity? And should interface take the lead in the approach to branding? It does throw open a good debate on the role of brand and the sum of its parts.

I’m off to the cinema (the 5th screen:).

As seen in WARC:

Increasing numbers of brand owners are pursuing a “societal purpose”, but most have not yet yielded a competitive advantage from doing so, a study has revealed.

Deloitte, the advisory group, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research provider, surveyed 390 senior executives worldwide, and found 82% of featured companies had a formal societal purpose.

In all, 73% of the panel agreed that their firm’s core activities made a valuable contribution to communities, while 11% disagreed with this view, and 16% offered no opinion on the subject.

Another 76% thought a societal purpose should be combined with corporate profits when measuring the value of a business, although 44% stated profit margins must “primarily” be used.

Respondents in Asia Pacific had particularly clear ideas about what having a purpose represents: 70% suggested such models were adopted by “mature” companies and 68% argued it was indicative of strong leadership.

By contrast, 75% of the African, Latin American and Middle Eastern sample saw this area as essential for future success, 71% described it as a strategy that was “here for the long haul” and 66% predicted it would attract both potential staff and customers.

Just 38% of North American contributors perceived societal purpose as key to their future success, 41% regarded it as “little more than window dressing” and 47% asserted that it reflected effective leadership.

In Europe, 56% of interviewees posited that embracing a social mission was an important long term objective. Less favourably, 22% reported such moves promised “high business potential”.

Barry Salzberg, global CEO of Deloitte, said: “We believe there is opportunity for this ‘societal purpose’ to be integrated into a business’s core activities, decisions, and identity. It is through this embedded purpose, in turn, that businesses can inspire positive economic, environmental, and social change.”

When assessing the qualities needed by future leaders, 45% of interviewees mentioned anticipating opportunities and challenges, 38% said managing change and 32% pointed to communicating about corporate social credentials.

At present, 75% of executives are familiar with their company’s statement of purpose, whereas a rather smaller 25% considered consumers to have a similar level of understanding in this area.

Moreover, while this mission influences culture and strategy at 51% of firms, a limited 37% of organisations believed it lent them credibility in the market, and 15% had already enjoyed a competitive advantage after following such principles.

Data sourced from Deloitte; additional content by Warc staff, 25 January 2012

Increasingly there are two types of consumer, those with more dinners than appetite and those with more appetite than dinners. To reverse this trend and deracinate the doom of a double dip, at Davos – where everyone’s saying “interdependent” community – requires shared responsibilities, shared benefits and shared values and please don’t try and convince the $100+trillion world economy is anything but self-indulged and survivalist. Ski and see.

This we must stop. Is part of the problem the fact we refer to ourselves as an “industry” which is self serving as opposed to focused on managing our clients business? If we took more time to truly understand our clients business, e.g., where and how they make their money, we might find more interesting things to do than muddling around with the brand strategy – which is the search for an idea. Perhaps that’s why we stay there!

Mickey, people died. You’re the boss and leadership is about holding peoples fears. Grow up. This is not about making friends.