“We’re so lucky we don’t have to create the brand out of thin air. We just tell the truth and the brand builds itself.”
The voice of Thomas Mahon quoted in one of Hugh’s latest posts. He’s talking about how his tailoring business took off through blogging.
I think that’s a radical perception of branding and creates quite a challenge to anyone who sees themselves as a brand manager.
It reminds me a precept of facilitation: get out of people’s way and they’ll organise themselves more intelligently than you can.
It’s also taps into thoughts I’ve been having lately about the circle of concern/circle of influence model. Regular readers will know I’m not a huge fan of models but this one is simple and carries some wisdom, despite some pedantic reservations of mine*
So often, I see stress caused when we try to manage conerns that are truthfully beyond our individual reach. A huge amount of brand building fails because it gets ahead of itself with grandiose ideas of when can be achieved. An awful lot of wasted effort goes into designing meetings and expecting fixed outcomes to be reached on a predetermined timetable – an approach that denies the participants the ability to organise themselves more subtly and enthusiastically.
* Circles with sharp boundaries suggest a neatness that’s missing in the real world; we might do better to think of fuzzy, irregularly shaped areas. With some animation to show that even the fuzzy boundaries are moving.
