The one-sentence summary:

To make corporations change effectively, the people who work in them have to behave differently, or be told how to do so.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Powerful brands are built by people, not by proprietary methodologies.
• The real issue is not the strategy, but how we need to behave when an organisation’s systems seem more geared to slowing and diluting, than spurring and galvanizing.
• To achieve this you need to be a Constructive Pirate. This is not the same as anarchy where there are ‘no rules’, but it requires a different set of rules.
• It shows how to write your own “Articles” in your organization.
• Even in big organisations, you need challenger sub-cultures.
• It explains nine ways of behaving that stimulate challenger brand cultures:

1. Outlooking: looking for different kinds of insights by:

Emotional Insertion – Putting a new kind of emotion into the category

Overlay – Overlaying the rules of a different category onto your own

Brand Neighbourhoods – Radically re-framing your competitive set

Grip – Finding a place for the brand to gain traction in contempory culture

2. Pushing – Pushing ideas well beyond the norm
3. Projecting – Being consistent across far more media than the usual
4. Wrapping – Communicating less conventionally with customers
5. Denting – Respecting colleagues whilst making a real difference
6. Binding – Having a contract that ensures everyone comes with the idea
7. Leaning – Pushing harder for sustained commitment
8. Refusing – Having the passion to say no
9. Taking It Personally – A different professionalism that transcends corporate man

ELEMENTS OF THE BOOK I PARTICULARLY LIKE

The Three Buckets is a good exercise whereby clients have to categorise all their existing projects into Brilliant Basics, Compelling Differences and Changing the Game – usually with poignant results (see Three Buckets tool)