The consumer has become increasingly sophisticated in the way they obtain and digest information - of the simple reason that they've become comfortable about building and maintaining their own personal brands. This has thickened their "filter" and as a result made them become more critical towards advertising and communication.

Brand handling synergy means developing and communicating your company's values and identity consistently.

What do Harley-Davidson, LEGO, and Apple have in common? They're all based on communities.

Considering LEGO's considerable brand equity, you might expect that the company must have a marketing budget in the billions. Not so. In fact, LEGO's marketing budget is so modest that if I recorded it here, you'd probably think it was a typo. LEGO doesn't do its own talking; it lets LEGO maniacs talk for it.

Spinning out of my neuromarketing work where, based on scanning the brains of 2,000 respondents' brains using fMRI, we learned that there's a huge correlation between religion and branding - and thus the way that brands intend to generate customer evangelism are to be constructed.

Imagine Pepsi without Coke. Impossible, right?

Opinion free brands simply will struggle to survive in the future - of that simple reason that we increasingly want to associate ourselves with opinionated and authentic brands.