Chapter 5Who Owns Your Brand?

You Have to Let Go to Hold On

"Let go." That was the brand message Procter & Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley brought to the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) 2006 annual conference. Lafley told the ANA audience that modern branders live in "a let-go world," where marketers are better served to "let go" of their brands and let consumer wants and needs drive brand strategy. He illustrated his point by showing a Pringles "commercial" created by a British teen and distributed on YouTube.1

Mildly damning the speech with faint praise on AdAge.com, Advertising Age's Matthew Creamer noted, "The cry was somewhat unexpected coming from the chief of the consumer-goods marketer and advertising titan well known for carefully ...

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