Spiral Marketing!

David Armano on Futurelab suggest rightly the spiral symbol to visualise the new way illuminated marketeers think about branding.  "Often times our first interaction with a brand is through a digital touch point like a site.  Maybe we heard about it from a friend or somewhere else.  We interact with it—we give it a try.  If we like it—that leads to deeper levels of engagement.  Maybe this repeats itself adding more "cycles" to the spiral.  We continue to engage. Some of us even begin to participate.  We transition from downloading to uploading our media.  We talk about how great the experience is.  To our peers, to each other.  We become evangelists—the spiral actually expands as we engage with multiple touchpoints—not only the digital ones. 

All of this adds up to a positive associations with whoever is responsible for providing the excellent experience.  We come together with others who feel the same way.  We instantly bond with them over our shared interests and experiences.  Community forms.  Then one day, someone who's never tried brand or service X hears about it from a friend.  A member of some community.  They fire up their digital device of choice and the interaction begins once again—a new spiral is formed."

Many years ago (it was even last century and we were still called i-merge), we started using "8" as a symbol to explain to the market  the difference between the 8 elementary communication tasks, the importance of the database ( in the centre of the "8"! ) and the unique registration moment as a tipping point in the relation between a person and a brand. On a macro level the upper and the lower part of the "8" are spirals illustrating both the growing amount  of persons relating to a brand and also the growing intensity of the individual relation. David's spiral marketing idea can be nicely married to our "8".