Chasing Cool
Standing Out in Today's Cluttered Marketplace
Chapter One: The iPod of My Industry: Whatever They Did, I Want That A killer application is a powerful thing, which is why people are always looking for one.
In the age when more and more people believe there is a shortcut to cool, however, companies are increasingly frantic in their chase for one of those killer apps. And as a result, they're more likely than ever to be looking in someone else's backyard.
Of course, companies have always looked longingly into other company's yards. "In the '50s you wanted to be the General Motors of something," adman and Adweek columnist Tom Messner told us. "In the early '60s you wanted to be the Xerox of something, then it became the IBM of something, then the Nike of something, and the list goes on and on. At one point people even wanted to be the Japan of something. My friend Bill McGowan, CEO of MCI from 1968 to 1987, said this to me: there's always something that somebody wants to be the something of."
Today, the paradigm has shifted to another popular brand, and everyone wants a piece of it. What used ... read full excerpt from: Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today's Cluttered Marketplace ebook
