For Martin

Hi branding guru! There are tons of stories about the rise of the weblogs and its discovery as a business tool. To start, here is a story which could be interesting for you: At a recent advertising conference McDonalds declared that mass marketing no longer works and that it has adopted a new marketing technique called "brand journalism." McDonalds described the concept as one marking "the end of brand positioning as we know it." He went on to say that effective marketing should use many stories rather than employing one message to reach everyone. In effect, he declared that McDonald's was abandoning the universal message concept. "Any single ad, commercial or promotion is not a summary of our strategy. It's not representative of the brand message," McDonalds chief marketing officer said. "We don't need one big execution of a big idea. We need one big idea that can be used in a multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way." PR Machine thinks that "brand journalism' is a reaction to the threat of customers talking back to company brands through blogs. "New technologies such as blogs interrupt the power of controlled communications and its brand messages. (..) Blogging is a technology of un-control." Plus: Interesting comments of marketing guru Seth Godin regarding "Brand Journalism".