Watching this latest spin from Olympus Camera UK I got to thinking about brand re-invention and increasingly leveraged knowledge capitol, especially brands traditionally oriented towards a "gearhead" sub-culture. Forget the gear, as Spacey opines in this clip, can you feel the hurt?.

It's like comparing apple to apples, really, one is not much different from the other. Sure, we can talk about organic this and miles-to-plate that. Indeed as food becomes increasingly politicized, the "conscientious" brand market around it is swelling as well. In the end though, most people who want one will simply turn to what's convenient. Most people just want an apple. So how do you market a commodity that is so... common? Well, you can start by marketing the knowledge around the apple. You can begin to define a community that is uniquely accessible to you and your particular brand of knowledge capitol. It could be as simple as how to make cider, to the complexities of growing apples themselves.

The point is that brands are born and re-imagined from within increasingly knowledge oriented communities, and there exists a dialogue within those communities. The viability of brands in the 21'st century will, in large part, be informed by that dialogue... get it?