With the promised 2nd quarter MarkMonitor report due imminently it is worth reading the Brandjacking index first published at the end of April. The report is the first effort to study the threats that online channels can pose to brands.One never knows where one’s brand may be unintentionally found.

What happens when the paradigms of brand loyalty see a monumental tectonic shift. Brands are developed to create a sense of relationships due to familiarity, quality of service and even lust. What if a new defining factor to why we make our purchases is to be added that fundamentally changes our sense of value?The recently published book “Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally” is possibly an indication of where the consumer may start to move towards, that is, a method of product selection that is based upon distance between what we buy and where the product came from. Organic produce provided us with a sense of doing the right thing, but that was oh so last century. The 21st century, with its sense of environmental accountability may have created the next big thing, brand loyalty based on locality.Thanks go to NPR to bringing this to our attention