Chris Grams - The Ad-Free Brand: Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World

Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World

Chris Grams

800 East 96th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

The Ad-Free Brand: Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World

Copyright 2012 by Christopher Grams

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-4802-7 ISBN-10: 0-7897-4802-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: August 2011

Associate Publisher
Greg Wiegand

Acquisitions Editor
Rick Kughen

Development Editor
Rick Kughen

Managing Editor
Sandra Schroeder

Project Editor
Seth Kerney

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Megan Wade

Indexer
Cheryl Lenser

Proofreader
Leslie Joseph

Technical Editor
Jonathan Opp

Publishing Coordinator
Cindy Teeters

Interior Designer
Anne Jones

Cover Designer
Anne Jones

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Bronkella Publishing, Inc.

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Chris Grams is president and partner at New Kind, where he builds sustainable brands, cultures, and communities in and around organizations. The open source wayincluding themes like openness, collaboration, transparency, community, and meritocracyis a key influence in his work.

Previously, Chris spent 10 years at Red Hat, the worlds leading supplier of open source solutions, where he played a key role in building the Red Hat brand and culture, most recently in the role of senior director, Brand Communications + Design.

Chris blogs about the dark matter of organizationsbrand, community, and cultureat Dark Matter Matters (www.darkmattermatters.com) and about the intersection of the open source way and business at opensource.com. He is also the Community Guide on Gary Hamels Management Innovation Exchange (www.hackmanagement.com), where he often writes about how to enable communities of passion in and around organizations.

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Every day advertising appears somewhere newon an airplane tray table, on the sidewalk, in our schools, written in the sky, printed on our clothes, embedded in our favorite TV shows.

In fact, it may be quicker for you to name the places where you do not see advertising today than to name the places you do (if you can think of any at all). Yet traditional advertising has never been less effective than it is today. It has become background noise filtered out by our brains before most of it can even register.

I reject the notion that adding to the clutter of advertising is a necessary element of building a great brand.

I believe money and time can be much better spent investing in meaningful, productive relationships with the community of people in and around the organization who care deeply about a brand. These people are an energy source waiting to be activated. Properly engaged, they can help your brand succeed in ways that advertising never will. And a new breed of digital media tools and strategies has made it easier and cheaper to identify, organize, and motivate your brand community than ever before.

The Ad-Free Brand marries the classic positioning principles used to develop many of the great brands of the twentieth century to the new community-building strategies and tools now available for twenty-first-century brands.