The Ad-Free Brand: Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World

8. Some Final Thoughts

I hope I have given you a clear sense of how to build a healthy ad-free brand by combining simple, timeless brand positioning principles with new ways of engaging with communities born out of the open source movement.

You’ve probably seen many familiar ideas within these pages, including uses of social media and other digital strategies that you might already be testing in your own organization. But perhaps you can now organize and think about them in a new way.

In 2010, I left Red Hat after spending a full decade building an ad-free brand from scratch. I love Red Hat and still consider myself a loyal member of the Red Hat brand community. But, along with some of my best friends in the world, I saw an opportunity to apply ...