On of the freshest, most stimulating perspectives on branding that I’ve seen in YEARS appears this month in CMO magazine. A guest perspective by Taddy Hall, the chief strategy officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, is full of insight and statistics and bitterly funny experience. And it’s beautifully written. He comes up with wonderful catch phrases I’ll be using for years, such as "Customers do not buy products … they hire them to do jobs for them." (Photo and bio at Digital Hollywood conference page)

CMO Guest Commentary: Are We Living in a ‘Branding Bubble’? by Taddy Hall

Don’t think "top of mind."
Instead, think "back of mind." The human brain, compensating for limited faculties of absorption, has developed staggeringly powerful filtering mechanisms. Neuroscientists calculate that each of us is bombarded by 11M bits of information per second, and we process a mere 40 of these bits. We have to be pretty good filterers just to make it through the day. Interestingly one of the hallmarks of advancing civilization, anthropologists have observed, is the quantity and complexity of tasks individuals perform without having to think consciously. If you can help people conserve their scarce thinking faculties, they’ll reward you.