Volvo Goes Out Of Control

Volvo seem to be testing their control threshold with the launch of the new C30.  The website has a message board where people can say their bit about the new motor.  Currently messages range from, "A vision of tomorrow today", to, "I''d like to set it on fire and hit it with a baseball bat 37 times".  Reminds me of a very nifty paper, "The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication", sent to me by Mohammed Iqbal, a planner with O&M in Bangalore, India, in which he says, "In the future good brand building will be fast, cheap and out of control".   As David Maister says, "the truth is that the need out there is not for new ideas, but for old wisdom communicated in better ways."