Last year i graduated from the IPA excellence diploma with a 2:1. As part of the course they ask you to write a final essay detailing “I believe…”. The best have recently been published in a book edited by Nick Kendall What is a 21st century brand. Unfortunately my essay didn’t get published so I’m going to publish it here. It starts with an explanation of the whole EQ thing and then proceeds to build out the brandEQ model, a guide to behaviour for the modern brand. The feedback was that although backed by the broadest amount of reading, research and proof and a very interesting hypothesis (the use of EQ as a guiding principle) the actual “execution” i.e. the implementation of the above wasn’t new enough to get top marks.
In hindsight it does lack a bit of pizzazz! and could probably have done with a little more controversy. Much of what i say is also now very much on the agenda of many brands and so the long-term application is limited. However as a one stop shop for brand learning and planning it’s still very much of use and part of its application was to provide a new standard approach with a different lens so not all bad.
Rather than copy the whole document into this blog format the link is below.
theeqplanner 