Jeremy Waite

A recent study at Harvard University suggested that 5% of ANY given group can influence the remaining 95% to bring about change. Try thinking about that the next time you think your team is too small to make a difference....

A few years ago, Piers Morgan suggested that celebrity-driven journalism was no longer the way to sell newspapers. Three years ago, a survey found that 60 per cent of adults were bored with celebrity and yet Neilson TV ratings and book sales suggest otherwise. Why is it that we are so fascinated with celebrities?

What's really interesting in this age of social media is that we treat companies and organizations like people. In the eyes of the law, companies actually are people, with their own individual legal entities, but we now actually talk about companies as if they were people and give them human traits. We give companies personalities and interact with them in the social web space, often as if they were one of our friends....

The lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from Lady Gaga are not what she has done, but how she did it. It's not by accident that Forbes Magazine ranked her ‘The Most Powerful On-Line Celebrity in the World' earlier this year. Companies who previously didn't understand how to use Twitter or Facebook properly, now employ ‘social media executives' who look to celebrities like Lady Gaga for inspiration about growing their own brands. 5 Tips to "Grow Your Brand Like Lady Gaga"...

It seems strange that a brand consultant such as myself would tell everyone that brands are dying, but I genuinely believe that we are in the middle of a significant cultural change. The brands that miss these changes and don't adapt accordingly may not be around in a few years. It's that serious. Get a coffee and a biscuit and read this carefully. It could just be the catalyst that encourages you to relate to your customers in a totally different way.