Hasta La Creative!

I’ve long said that major corporations and marketers simply don’t want to “join the conversation,” so to speak. They’d prefer not to engage in two-way dialogue with their customers and would just as soon keep the one-way megaphone.

But now comes a very persuasive little handboook for those very marketers, The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made Worldby Kelly Mooney and Nina Rollins.

Despite its small size (think of it as a Lonely Planet Guide to Web 2.0), it’s a very thorough compendium of all the definitions, types, and issues surrounding new media, a new type of “engaged citizen” and what it means to “open up” a brand to all the new forms of marketing. As it is, it’s a very of-the-moment book, that is to say it may be all different a year from now.

The Open Brand is chock-full of case studies, diagrams, and techniques for moving brands along. And it also broaches a number of legal issues surrounding blogs and the “fair use” of materials in consumer-generated ideas.

If you, your agency, or in particular a client of yours needs an introduction, replete with glossary, to get them up to speed on new media and Web 2.0-type ideas, The Open Brand is a great place to start.

Special thanks to FSB Associates for providing me a copy for review.