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.

Big data is great when you want to verify and quantify small data - as big data is all about seeking a correlation - small data about seeking the causation.

The enemy shapes the brand.

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.

In a world where authenticity increasingly is in focus, consumers are seeking more than brands who focuses on revenue - consumers want to support brands with a purpose - one that justifies an emotional engagement.

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.

We're all obsessed with our smartphones and thus really don't see anything around us.