Ryan MacMillan

After the whole London 2012 farago (even The Onion saw fit to join in), Useable Interfaces points us in the direction of the branding fallout: Russell Davies furnishes us with an intriguing post about the devaluing of “brand” through mis-use and over-use (indicative quotation: “it’s about as useful as being a thing consultant and saying that everything is a thing”). It’s a bit of a think-piece, which he promises will end up, in more polished form, in Campaign shortly, but it’s definitely worth the read. He identifies just what it is that so vexes people about “branding”, whilst warning against “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” (nb: if anyone knows whether or not that phrase orginates with the Durang play, I’d be grateful for the info). It’s the perfect companion piece to John Dodd’s imprecation that we “Kill all the branding experts” (what, all of them?)
Deliciously, this all comes at the same time as The Apprentice “villain” (oh, please) Katie Hopkins has been fired from her £90,000 job as a Brand Consultant with the Met Office, after failing her probation. Mmm-hmmm. The Met Office. The Meteorological Office of the Ministry of Defence. The guys who forecast the weather. Her firing will likely be reported as just desserts for a sour-faced conniving TV villain… but I suspect that it might just be because someone at the Met Office suddenly realised that, ummmm, maybe they didn’t need a brand consultant because, ummmm, they forecast the weather?

UPDATE (June 13) Apparently, the Met Office has denied that they were paying Hopkins £90,000 as a brand consultant. The mystery deepens… were they paying her more?