Brands are everywhere and take many forms, but it takes a while for delegates to my Brand Discovery workshops to get around to adding authors to the lists we create – however authors definitely are brands and Michael Crichton is one of the biggest. From Jurassic Park to his latest novel “Next” every new arrival from Michael demonstrates what it takes to create a successful brand.
I’m not sure if he, or his publishers have even done anything like my Brand Discovery programme to produce the definitive Michael Crichton Brand Model, but if they had, my money would be on them having identified his “promise” as being something like “making every page-turn an introduction to new thoughts and ideas”. For sure a Crichton novel is guaranteed not only to heighten your awareness of what’s going on behind those closed doors, but it will draw your attention to new doors that you didn’t even know were there and set you thinking about where all the “going on” is taking us. Usually, as in the case of Next, its somewhere few would volunteer to venture.
I have always wondered when reading Michael’s books, at the incredible detail and insider knowledge that could only be the result of an inordinate amount of research and even given that he has PhD from Harvard Medical School “Next”, which is staged in the world of genetic research and medicine, 
must have represented no less of a piece of work.
From the questions that are posed to me as I work around the world I get the impression that there are people who believe that once they have a good idea and a marketing strategy, success is guaranteed, but, of course, its never that simple and whatever field you are in there will rarely be an alternative to hard graft. Hard work can make an average idea float and turn a decent idea into something truly worthwhile.
In business development workshops I often ask delegates what is an acceptable level of success in delivering your promise and people usually answer with percentages that are well below 100%, which still amazes me. The thing is that the best laid plans can and do go wrong and aiming for 100% usually results in a delivery of far less than that. The fact is that if you want to succeed you have to deliver100% and that means aiming well above that. Michael Crichton, despite his success and the fact that, at least from the perspective of most of us, is unlikely to need ever to work again, clearly understands this.
Great ideas that challenge convention, incredibly highly researched and worked at with a work ethic akin to a coal-face worker, this is a profile of a great brand and the reason why Michael Crichton is way up there on my list of the World’s Great Brands. What are yours and why?
Michael Weaver
January 1, 2008