I'm interrupting my blogging holiday to bring you this unfinished thought: Branding isn't.
It's genuinely an unfinished idea. I'm saying it partly to challenge the frequency with which people are busily defining brands. (Evelyn gets on the back of the "brand is a promise" crew here) A brand is this, a brand is that, people say, like they own the word and it's theirs to define. It's fine to speak this way (I'm sure I do myself) but it does seem to lead to a lot of abstraction wars.
And there's a nice irony there, as I think that a lot of talk about brands carries an assumption that stating an opinion as if it is some kind of fact constitutes the act of branding. Take any brand slogan and you're likely to find exceptions and mismatches if not downright massive contradictions in reality. Indeed those exceptions, paradoxes and contradictions are part of what makes the brand what it is... something we can approximate but not define.
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this idea. I just know I feel like saying Branding Isn't and seeing what happens.
And now back to my blogging holiday. You may feel that I need it...
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Comments (7)
Exactly. Ask a rancher from my home state of Nebraska what a brand is and you'll receive a much different treatise. One that has everything to do with the ownership of cattle.
February 4, 2005 03:04 Permalink for comment
Johnnie -
Good thoughts. I focused a chapter in Beyond the Brand on this very subject. I'll post some exerpts tomorrow. My conclusion was... "In this new era, it’s the creative citizens of a community – the people and the brands – that will help companies survive by co-creating from the bottom-up." More tomorrow.
February 4, 2005 03:07 Permalink for comment
Branding isn't BECAUSE IT'S DEAD
bwah ha ha ha ha ha...
February 5, 2005 03:04 Permalink for comment
Death of this, death of that pronouncements are so dramatic. You must have more ammo than that Hugh. Oh yes, there's that manifesto you put an H in front of. I'll go reread it at once.
February 5, 2005 14:09 Permalink for comment
Relax Johnnie. Enjoy the city. The concept of "brand" is so darn simple that - like fish aren't aware of the water they live in - we "experts" can't see it. Stay tuned.
P.S. Wish I could have hooked up while you were in the States. Safe travels my friend.
February 5, 2005 16:29 Permalink for comment
Thanks for the good wishes Tom... when you say the concept of brand is simple, I guess that's your concept of brand you're talking about.
February 6, 2005 00:21 Permalink for comment
Johnnie, I suppose your right. However, if inherent in the commercial version of the word "brand" is eventually some type of customer action and a corresponding brand result, I still say it's darn simple. ;)
February 6, 2005 14:45 Permalink for comment