18 Nov Is there more than one right answer?

At milk*, we spend a lot of time working to find the core essence of a brand, and that knowledge will always be key to our clients’ success. That said, this article on Contagious.com has us rethinking what we might do once a brand hits cyberspace. Brand theorist, John Wilshire, looks at the differences between dialectic and dialogic conversations – and what that means for our industry. Dialectic conversation is an exchange of views which resolves in consensus: One right answer. While dialogic conversations are an exchange between multiple views that is left without forcing them all together: Many answers. Dialectic conversations work well in boardrooms where everyone follows the one right answer, but the internet is a dialogic space with no consensus, no single point of view and no order. Coca Cola one of the brands shape shifting their way through our multichannel, multicultural world. A ‘brand’ is one of the most powerful and pervasive ideas of the past century, let’s all see how they fare in our messy, contradictory and fragmented world.