another sci-fi reference

One of [email protected]'s comments below reminded me of my favourite definition of a brand. (Which completey undermines my points below about being straightforward with language etc, but hey, I'm a planner, what do you expect, consistency?)

It's the same as William Gibson's definition of cyberspace - a "consensual hallucination". That's what a brand is, a "consensual hallucination", it's something illusiory that only exists because sufficient numbers of people are willing to pretend that it's real.

Comments

[richard]

best opening line in any book is deo neuromancer "The sky was tuned to the colour of a dead t.v channel"

Rock and roll

lets hallucinate

[andy @ cynic]

russell, did you give robert a name-check on your site because it's his birthday in a couple of days?

after thinking about it for all of 13 seconds, that's the only possible reason the entire office could come up with.

[Leland M]

Just riffing for fun here:

The fact is that money is also a "Consensual Hallucination." The US $ is not world anything of value except faith in a shared view.

[russell]

True. In fact everything's a consensual hallucination. Man. We're through the looking glass now people.

[Faris]

I consent.

And I love the idea that we are all consenting together, sharing the same hallucinations about products and services that can turn them into myths and icons.

Nick Kendall at BBH has this photo taken somehwere in Africa with a kid that has drawn Nike swooshes on his trainers.

It's bizarre: entirely different cultures with entirely different value systems across the world all share the same hallucination about brands.