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

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.

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.

New techniques - often spinning out of technology and lack of privacy has resulted in new manipulative communication formats.

Here in particular the idea of contextual communication - i.e. communicating the right message, at the right time to the right audience - seems to generate an increasing effect on the consumer in a manipulative way.