Your citizens, users, or customers are looking for shortcuts.  Quicker ways to do things: lose weight, gain wealth.  Close a business deal, open another opportunity.

As our physical and digital worlds continue to blend, more of these shortcuts are found online.  And they are visible, measurable, and monetiseable.

So the biggest challenge to growth isn’t really about audience, it’s about organisations.  Getting an organisation to keep up with the new shortcuts your audience take is hard.  The real art of brand planning is using it to get people to do the things you want: individuals, departments, partners—and then finally customers.