The film The Year of Living Dangerously was the only film I ever walked out of and within ten minutes realized what a terrible error that was. You just can’t get back into a film in the UK if you leave the theater. I would dread that we look at the end of 2009 and feel the same. We are about to enter a very chaotic year, a year of living dangerously.
You may or may not have heard of this term from college football. I am not quite sure of its history but it serves as a delightful, if not extreme, US sports analogy for the way some integrated marketers jump - too readily to extreme commitments to new ways of marketing. The natural defense for these changes is the concept of early mover advantages. A brand can have a less cluttered environment for marketing and hopefully get a share of voice advantage in the environment. If all things were equal and this was the only variable "novelty of medium and growth," then the thesis might well apply. There are three truths to think about before you run this play.