Storytelling has driven faith and religious practice, keeping them alive for millennia. Just as every hymn, icon, and stained-glass window in a church links to a story, brands have the potential to build holistic identities.

Think about it - what's the first thing you do when waiting for someone who's late? Grab your smartphone and do something with it ...anything with it - so that you don't look like a loser. However by doing so we've lost our ability to be present - to observe, to connect with others and most importantly to be bored.

Where big data is all about seeking correlations - and thus to make incremental changes - small data is all about causations - seeking to understand the reasons why.

The enemy shapes the brand.

Roughly 21,000 new brands are introduced worldwide per year, yet history tells us that more than 90% of them are gone from the shelf a year later.

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.

Today's evangelism is just as likely to take place via chat rooms and viral videos as it is in a personal conversation or a sermon.