Sublime

In nearly every instance, after conducting what I call Subtext Research (which I occasionally shorten to Subtexting), a detailed process that involves visiting consumers in their homes, gathering small data offline and online, and crunching, or Small Mining, these clues with observations and insights taken from around the world, there almost always

Consumers rely on familiar brand names to restore fluency to the situation.

To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic. Conventional logic says you find your concept inside yourself or inside the product. Not true. What you must do is look inside the prospect’s mind. You won’t find an “uncola” idea inside a 7-Up can. You find it inside the cola drinker’s head.

I’ve come to realize, too, that my capacity to link a single observation with another across multiple countries in the course of building or rescuing a brand amounts to a strange skill of sorts.