As many Think readers already know, Big Spaceship was one of the founding agencies in a non-profit association called the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA).  SoDA brings together a range of amazing digital agencies (41, at current count) from around the world, all of whom share a common desire to advance the field of digital marketing. This year, that shared desire led to the publication of The SoDA 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook, a fantastic collection of articles and thought pieces from SoDA members.

On Big Spaceship's behalf, I contributed a piece entitled "Stop Spreading Viruses and Start Giving Gifts," in hopes that 2010 might finally be the year when the marketing community moves past the generally flawed, frequently counter-productive, and fundamentally arrogant idea that "viral" is a specific type of work that marketers can choose to create, rather than the resulting pattern when people choose to share something with each other.

When it was announced a while back that Zend was going to include AMF (Action Message Format) functionality supported by Adobe, I was excited to hear that there would be an "official" way to use AMF with PHP, as I had used AMFPHP, an unsupported implementation, with mixed success. I experimented with Zend AMF a little when it was released, and there were two things that annoyed me about this implementation as compared with AMFPHP, but I revisited it this week and discovered remedies for both issues.

A brand’s vanishing act risks being seen as oddly plucky or, worse, patronizing. This is particularly true if the reasoning behind it is rooted in a short-sighted quick fix or a publicity stunt. You might as well slap a Band-Aid onto an ulcer. In Parts I and II of this series, I looked at Muji, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Freshjive and, briefly, Al Green. Their changes in behavior imply not “brandlessness” but a desire to define a new brand or reinvent an existing one.

In Part I of this series, I looked at the idea of an established brand crafting a new identity and what that meant for Starbucks' experimental café. When compared to Muji, it became clear that—regardless of name or logo—product and design are central to communications. Some of Muji's products are created by known designers. While their names are absent from the work, they are associated with and, thus, represent the brand. Such behavior is sustainable.

If a product has any sort of defined presence in the marketplace, going “brandless” may seem impossible—or potentially foolish. Intrigued by the logo-less café that Starbucks opened in Seattle this summer, I set out to explore that and other intentional moves to drop, disassociate or reinvent a brand. In comparing these efforts to Muji—a brand built on being brandless (sort of)—I looked at what value there is in seeking symbiosis and adopting a long-term perspective when experimenting with a brand.