Branding used to be about polishing and smoothing, to make shiny images of products and services that we'd all admire.

These shiny things would have USPs, propositions and such. There'd be manuals to try and make sure everyone kept to the script, to achieve perfection.

But shiny things have a problem: they don't generate much friction. They're hard to hold onto. And you don't want people's fingerprints to spoil the look. The laminate on the glossy brochure is like a glass case at the museum: look, but don't touch.

Now branding needs to celebrate the rough... the inconsistent... different people saying different things about different bits of you.

It's not as pretty and easy to control... but it's how you create friction, how you create more and more places where your product or service can get a bit of traction with the rest of us.