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Branding Unbound

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Book Review -- The future of advertising, sales and the brand experience in the wireless age

Branding Unbound

Branding Unbound – The future of advertising, sales and the brand experience in the wireless age – Rick Mathieson; AMACOM, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 1019; www.amacombooks.org; ISBN 0814472877; 244 pages, July 15, 2005; $24.95

Reviewed by: G.A. “Andy” Marken, president, Marken Communications Inc, andy@markencom.com

The combination of cellphones and digital cameras, Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile gaming solutions have grown rapidly in the last two years. Hardware and software producers as well as content and service providers have already seen tremendous increases in sales and it is only just beginning. Untethered, it represents the ability for people to be constantly in contact with each other and their content – audio and video. It also represents the breathless opportunity for PR people to reach, inform, help and abuse not only members of the press but also the consumer on a direct and personal basis.

Rick’s Branding Unbounded opens the door for both good and evil in our opinion. It will deliver good if people read the entire book and understand the pros and cons as well as the dos and don’ts. But the book has a stronger potential for evil because it has been our experience that too many people only retain that information they want to keep that will help them reach people in a broadcast manner rather than 1:1. Filtering messages and audiences takes work and creativity. That’s often a needless waste of time for many so they take the author’s information and hurt the relationships for the rest of us.

The wireless “opportunities” have already captured the attention of the pornography industry which is making it difficult for legitimate businesses to effectively implement the applications to strengthen the 1:1 brand relationships for the rest of us.

But “that business” has been around since the beginning of communications and we’ve survived.

When the concept of short message services first arose in late 2000 it garnered very little attention. It took more than nine months for individuals and organizations to realize the value of sending short, sometimes cryptic alphanumeric messages. Today people men, women and youths routinely put their cellphones on “stun” in meetings, classes and other activities where answering the phone would be disruptive and prohibited. They are still able to communicate stay in touch and as we say all too frequently, multitask.

Wireless technology has improved dramatically for businesses and consumers today helping to shorten the business supply chain, track product and consumer habits and increasingly reach people at the right time and right place. In slightly more than 200 pages, Mathieson has done an excellent job of explaining the broad wireless arena that impacts every segment of business and industry.

More importantly and uniquely he has tailored the technology in terms that public relations people can understand. A great part of the credit for the clarification has to be in his approach of involving marketing and communications experts into the book who understand the technologies. We found the Q&A sections of the book with Seth Godin, Don Peppers, Christopher Locke, Gary Hamel and Howard Rheingold to extremely meaningful in helping PR people get a good grasp on how the technology can be used in a practical and progressive marketing effort for firms large and small.

While the concept of always on, always available is growing rapidly, it has already gained its unfair share of detractors. Consumer groups and governmental agencies in a number of countries are closely examining how the control:
- the recipient from being “trapped” into receiving promotional messages he or she has no interest in receiving just because they activated their mobile device
- the recipient who chooses to opt-in for the free or promotional supported service only receives a certain “class” of messages and is not forced to endure undesirable messages
- that the mobile user only receives a specific level of short message ads based on his or her device usage patterns and volumes
- widespread distribution of short messaging activities without prior agreement from the mobile user


The challenge for public relations people as Branding Unbound clearly emphasizes is to implement the messaging technology based on a well thought-out and staged complete communications program. Widespread and poorly strategized implementation will only cause a pushback by consumer groups, corporations, governmental agencies and consumers that can have direct and immediate repercussions for the initiator of the unnecessary, unrequested and undesirable intrusion.

As Mathieson points out, all of this information and technology are already available to organizations and some firms like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Kellogg’s, Apple and P&G are using it very effectively to strengthen their brands and brand relationships.

Anyone who is developing programs and strategies should read Branding Unbounded at least two to three times before they map out their tactics. If they don’t carry out their effort in a planned and controlled manner the backlash will be more than they even want to think about. Some people will read the book and skip over some important discussion points like measured program roll-outs of programs so that they can show management immediate and impressive results. While restrained implementation may be difficult we’re pretty certain that if the effort isn’t well thought out and executed it may appear in a form and shape do the organization – and more importantly its PR people – more brand damage than they want to endure.

Fortunately, Mathieson has done much of the research for us and does a very good job of understanding how you can put the wireless technologies to work as a part of the overall public relations effort.

The path selection is ours to take!!!!

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