American Express created OPEN forum, an online community sharing business advice between peers, leading entrepreneurs and industry bloggers. OPEN forum gives them greater exposure, business development tools, and an opportunity to build credibility for their business. So we know that if a brand is seen to have a strong point of view, then its consideration, or its likelihood of being among a consumer’s group of possible choices, is heightened. Brands with stronger points of view also rank higher in consumer perception. We created an algorithm and applied it on a larger scale to WPP’s Millward Brown BrandZ database, one of the largest sets of brand data available anywhere. We found that the best-performing brands for point of view outperformed the lowest by 2.2 times in terms of their likelihood of future market share growth. Predictive methodology like this can’t prove a relationship between ideals and business. Nor is there any business index I know that does so retrospectively. The macro evidence is prima facie; the micro evidence tends to require confidential company information, however convincing it may be. In other words, it could pay to believe. So what makes this so powerful for the digital age? One very important thing: it provides a means by which a brand can organize itself amidst the digital chaos that