Companies should be idea-led and comsumer-informed

Change Your Mind, Grow Your Company

In a world filled with dogma, the future of business belongs to the heretics.

The only unsurprising thing about the new economy is that it's full of surprises. Who could have predicted that Dell Computer, a company started by an undergrad at the University of Texas, would outperform the world's most powerful technology company? Or that America Online, long ridiculed as a destination for "newbies," would acquire the world's best-known media company?
These propositions seem downright heretical -- and that's what makes them so powerful. Indeed, the folks at Merkley Newman Harty, a New York City-based, $300 million ad agency with such big-name clients as BellSouth and the motorcycle division of BMW, believe that the only way to lead in the new world of work is to deconstruct the ruling dogma of your industry, to generate heretical ideas to challenge that dogma, and then to build strategies (as well as branding campaigns) around those ideas. "I'm trying to bury the phrase 'We're the voice of the consumer,' " says Douglas Atkin, 43, partner and director of strategic planning at Merkley. "These days, you can't succeed as a company if you're consumer-led -- because, in a world full of so much constant change, consumers can't anticipate the next big thing. Companies should be idea-led and consumer-informed."
And the most important idea is your "governing brand idea" -- an overall perspective that includes original insights about such things as the nature of what you're offering, your values, your personality, and your marketing performance. A governing brand idea distinguishes you from conventional wisdom and creates a compelling alternative in the eyes of customers. "In a world of change," Atkin and his colleagues like to say, "either you make history, or you are history."

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