BRANDLAND
The fable of the new world
An educational guide to understanding the new branding

PROLOGUE
I approach the door, it is passport control,
I have a doubt… will they let me enter?
I have prepared myself for this step,
I have learned to listen, to talk, to create emotion,
that the experience is more important that the message,
that attention is more important
than communication and… so, why do I doubt?
I know now… I doubt because I alone do not exist,
I doubt because I need you to take me with you,
I doubt because, for me to exist I need you;
because I, a brand, without you, a person,
cannot enter… because, simply, I do not exist.
Marc Cortés
anxious interactive
http://www.interactividad.org
2

Often, when we relax in front
of the television and we cannot find the remote control,
we desperately look for it without realizing
what we have been sitting on all along…
3

There was once a world
full of people, animals and things,
many, many things… so many that some
said there were too many, but
what can we do… that’s the way things are.
4

Many of these things were things
that people made to sell
to other people and so they could buy more things,
which caused other people to compete
in order to sell them these other things…
5

b
x k
a f
There were so many things and some seemed
so similar, that the people felt obliged
to give them “brands”, different from each other,
to be able to distinguish some from the others
and also to avoid going mad.
6

a Buy me!
In order to be able to sell their things better,
the people advertised them publicly
on sites that would reach the greatest number
of possible buyers, and if they could,
they raised the volume to attract attention.
7

One day, the people invented one
of those many things and they called it a computer.
This new invention was useful for ordering,
for filing and combining large amounts of
information that allowed them to do other things.
8

Another day, they invented the way in which these
computers could be connected together
in order to exchange information by means
of a protocol that could be used for the whole world,
creating a network of connections called the Internet.
9

For years, this new network of connections
went on and on expanding over
the whole world, allowing people
to be free of their physical limitations
to do many more things, more quickly.
10

Little by little, the people put
more and more things on this new network:
their photos, their documents, their money, their work,
their communications, their knowledge, their contacts
and finally also their social relationships.
11

After some time this network became
mobile and audio-visual… and then, one day,
one of these people, on disconnecting from the network,
asked a peculiar question: “Where have I been?”
He had discovered a new dimension…
12

Welcome to BRANDLAND:
The new dimension created through
the social experience network and which
makes up a new, non-physical world
but one that is real, dominated by brands
of people and things…
13

HELLO, I AM
A BRAND AND I LIVE
IN BRANDLAND
This character represents any
brand in BRANDLAND…
What is a brand? Well, simply:
“A brand is what people think of you.”
(Ted Matthews)
14

THEN…
YOU MEAN THAT
IF PEOPLE DON’T THINK
ABOUT ME… MY BRAND
DOESN’T EXIST?
Exactly.
You don’t have your brand,
people have it in their heads…
and therefore it depends totally
on people to sur vive.
15

BUT I AM VERY
IMPORTANT IN
REAL LIFE…
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE THAT
I DON’T EXIST HERE!
Your physical dimension does not matter here.
However important you are there outside, this
is reduced to whatever I think about you in here,
and if I do not think about you…
for me and probably for the people
around me, you do not exist; it’s that simple.
16

SO…
WHAT CAN I DO SO
THAT YOU THINK
ABOUT ME?
Talk to me about me
17

FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT ME
I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT YOU?
I DON’T QUITE UNDERSTAND…
Excite me.
Explain to me something that interests me
or that entertains me,
something that is related to me…
and I will think about you.
18

I AM VERY INTERESTING
AND I AM GOING
TO MAKE YOU HAPPY.
You stop being interesting when
you say that you are interesting…
Don’t tell me what you are going to do.
Simply do what you are going to say…
19

I DON’T
UNDERSTAND YOU…
Your time is finished.
Goodbye.
20

BRANDLAND is a new territor y
that needs to be seen from a new perspective.
For that reason, it is advisable to adjust your sight
and use version 2.0 glasses to see it.
21

THE 2.0 ADJUSTMENT
CONSISTS OF THIS
LISTEN
SHARE
ENGAGE IN DIALOGUE
BUILD
EXPLORE
and… voilà! you are already adjusted.
22

It is important that you consider
that all the inhabitants of BRANDLAND
are brands, but also, curiously, media
and agencies at the same time. That is to say, here
communication is MULTIDIRECTIONAL.
23

It is essential for your sur vival in BRANDLAND
that you take care of your REPUTATION.
What is your REPUTATION? Well, ver y simple:
what people say about you when you
are not there…
24

AND HOW I CAN
CONTROL MY REPUTATION?
Ver y easy:
YOU CANNOT
25

¿AND SO?
Stay calm.
If you are coherent with yourself and with
your surroundings, if you are real and authentically
you for the right amount of time…
you will have the reputation that you deser ve.
26

Certainly, the worst thing than can happen
to you in BRANDLAND
is that they think you are Spam.
Never shout or go where you are not wanted
if you don’t want to be alone.
27

One aspect that you must take into
consideration is your POSITIONING,
that is, the place where they see you and how
they see you with respect to the other brands
in a certain environment.
28

It is also important to relate and move
in the right way to obtain the maximum
knowledge and so that others have
the best image of you. Tell me where you are
and I will tell you who you are.
29

REPUTATION is the fame or the popularity
you have in a certain environment.
It is essential not to confuse REPUTATION with
NOTORIETY, which here you get
by making a spectacle of yourself.
30

ENGAGEMENT is the commitment
that unites people with your brand and
that allows you to have their LOYALTY. That is to say,
the reason that people follow you and why
they are not going to leave you for any other brand.
31

Use the minimum
number of words and answer
these questions:
1. Who I am
2. What I do
3. How I do it
4. Where I am going
our BRAND CODE is the combination
of values that makes up the personality of
your brand and that makes you different from
the others. You must always be ver y sure, since
it acts like the DNA of your IDENTITY.
32

1. To focus
2. To project
It is advisable when communicating,
that you understand that people have a short
attention span when it comes to thinking about you,
and so, before PROJECTING a message to
the outside, remember that you must FOCUS it first.
33

2+2= 4
SIMPLICITY is great capital in
BRANDLAND. If you can say something with one
word, do not say it with two and if you can use
just one image, do not use several…
Here, really, LESS IS MORE.
34

BRANDING is the essential tool
that allows you to communicate,
evolve and develop in BRANDLAND.
In the same way that
MARKETING is making a market,
BRANDING is making a brand.
35

Three types of brands exist in BRANDLAND:
1. Things’ brands (products, organizations or ser vices).
2. Personal brands (of people).
3. The personal ones that are also things’ brands.
36

If you are a “thing”, don’t forget that the people
who make up your brand are also a brand,
as with your users… So you are going to have
to take LEADERSHIP and NETWORKING
ver y seriously to flow with your surroundings.
37

So that your brand FLOWS it must learn
to be LIQUID. This means that it must always
have the capacity to adapt constantly
to the changes that take place in its surroundings
and to develop with them.
38

If you are going to create a BRANDING PLAN,
remember that you are in a quantum,
unpredictable world, and that exactly for that reason,
your sur vival as a brand depends on you knowing how
to communicate the same thing in thousands of different
ways and on hundreds of different sites.
39

BRAND
PUNCH
wave breaking
wave building
beginning
time
If you are going to create a BRANDING PLAN,
remember that the tactical operations of your
brand work like waves and that your strategy
must always be guided in the same direction so that
you don’t get lost in the unpredictable sea that
makes up your surroundings.
40

COMFORTABLE 4. RECONIGZED BRAND
BRAND
THAT IS INTEGRATED IN
USE HABITS
WELL-KNOW
BRAND
3. POPULAR BRAN
ATTRACTIVE
BRAND 2. ATTRACTIVE BRAND BUT
ONE THAT IS YOUNG OR
INCONSISTENT
COLD
BRAND
1. A NEW BRAND OR ONE
THAT DOES NOT ENGAGE
If you are going to create a BRANDING PLAN,
remember that in strategic construction there
are basically four different states or levels and
that it will be always be ver y useful for you to know
where you are in order to know what
you still have to build.
41

If you are going to make a BRANDING PLAN,
remember
that in BRANDLAND, advertising has not died.
It has simply been transformed into knowledge.
42

BRANDLAND is a new real territor y
that we humans have created by fusing
our social system with our computers.
Paradoxically, a new world generated thanks
to our technology and without physical limitations,
can allow us to create more human,
more socially-committed brands.
In any case, we have to be aware
that we are at the beginning of a new
and unique opportunity filled with new
possibilities…
where really
ever ything is yet to be done
and ever ything is possible.

When you switch off your computer or iphone and your mind returns to reality, have you never asked yourself…
Where have you been? … Many of us have a life on the Internet. Our photos, our contacts, our friends,
our money, our memories, our favourite entertainment, our email, our work… Every day our emotion
work their way through millions of capillary connections that make up a new reality to which we are
connected and we hardly notice the difference between it and our traditional physical reality. We develop,
we feel and we live the net in a way that is ever more intense and with ever more full experiences that
make up participate in a new world at the click of a button.
In this environment and with the unstoppable rise of social media like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube or Twitter,
to speak of virtuality or say that the Internet is just one more channel of communication begins to seem
questionable, at least. It could be said, using physical terminology, that we are faced with the discovery of
a true “Fifth Dimension” that cannot be represented nor completely explained in its totality by length,
width, depth or time. The immersion we experience on the net is quite unlike the two-dimensional physical
representation of the screen and goes far beyond the simple technological aspect to arrive at an experience
that transcends the physical and is supported by both the physical and the mental at the same time.
Without a doubt we at the dawn of a new reality that reminds us of some of the possible futures in
“The Matrix” or “Blade Runner”…
Welcome to BRANDLAND, the fable of the new world.
october 2008
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=41509598544
http://www.joanjimenez.com
THANKS TO:
Marcos Carmena ( http://www.fresquito.org )
Lucía Vázquez ( http://www.logios-traducciones.biz )
FRES UITOMIX