The Power of Energy

Apparently energy is everything. Well at least for brands and probably for me too. According to John Gerzema and Ed LeBar in their recent book “The Brand Bubble”, Energy is more important for a brand than awareness, trust, respect or familiarity in determining its future success.

Certainly, if you look at the recent US presidential campaign, that’s born out. An untried relatively inexperienced newcomer looks likely to win the election. While lacking experience and being relatively unknown, he certainly has energy. His speeches are exciting, his message is one of change and he approaches his marketing innovatively and creatively e.g. his recent foray into advertising in video games. The only recent threat was when the older, more experienced but less energetic McCain introduce Sarah Palin as a running mate. Talk about an injection of energy. But I guess that also shows that energy alone cannot sustain growth without some underlying substance.

It’s also been a favourite theme of mine. The first brand I worked on in Canada was Bell at BBDO. We were obsessed with energy, though we called it momentum. That’s because, if, you who remember your physics, it suggests direction as well as motion. Though, in retrospect, a better term might be Velocity, which doesn’t have the connotations of inertia.


At Bell we constantly tracked results on the question “I’m hearing more about them nowadays”. We believed that, like Oscar Wilde, “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”. The result of this thinking was the “People are coming back to Bell” campaign, which was immensely successful in a tough market situation.

According to Gerzema and LeBar many famous brands lack energy, including American Airlines, Midas and Exxon. So if you are involved with a brand like that you might want to ask yourself how to get more energy. To start you off some of the things that help are: differentiation, vision, innovation and creativity (in everything).

Now I’m going to start applying that concept to myself. It’s easier said than done. But if I’m successful, watch out world.

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