MUSINGS OF A MARKETER: PLATO, POETRY, AND BUILDING A BRAND

What is your Brand? By now we all know that a logo, typography, color palette, etc, is not actually THE Brand. Like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the visual story of your “branding” is not the Truth. To get to the essence of Brand we need to travel past the shadowy projections on the cave wall to discover the source. 

Simon Sinek tells us that the great “Brands” begin with their ‘Why’? Their maslovian purpose of being. But can that “Why” be considered your true Brand? You can do Jungian-like Inner Work to get into the deep understanding of your organization's “Why”, but not actually be a Brand yet because a Brand is not about navel-gazing. It’s about aligning the inner work with outer relationships. It requires us to go from one to many, from self to others. 

To go deeper into the meaning of Brand, I’m personally drawn to the visual described by the young 18th Century German Romantic poet, Novalis, when he penned a description of humanity's interplay of the Soul and the metaphysical Universe. Perhaps he was an early marketing philosopher when he picked up his quill? “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.” The seat of the Brand, its actualized essence, is where it meets the world. It is at every touchpoint of the overlap between a company’s products, service, action, people, and audiences. 

This begs additional questions of marketers: What is it that happens between a company and a person at that moment of the overlap? This is what Google started describing over ten years ago as Micro Moments that can lead to the ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth). How can we, as marketers, earn the opportunity for multiple ZMOTs and eventually for brand loyalty? 

At the exact moment when there is an exchange between a company and a person, a relationship is defined. That moment can ignite a positive spark, extinguish a flame, or be neutral and indifferent (perhaps the worst kind of exchange). A marketing leader’s goal, and arguably the entire leadership of a company’s goal, should be to turn those moments with your audiences into a positive experience, not as an end goal but as an infinite experience with your brand. As my yoga instructor said many years ago, there is no there, there. So it is with Brand.

When business leaders try to make branding a finite game, they will find that their brand-to-audience touchpoints, those moments in the Novalis-overlap, are inauthentic; their relationship with their audience is simply transactional. They might get what they need in the short term. However, earning long-term affinity and trust from a consumer requires consistent and reliable nurturing. True Branding is actually an infinite game. 

So go think back to that point in the overlap for your Brand. How does your audience, that specific person behind the persona, feel about their exchange with your Brand? Someone once said, “I will like you when I feel good about myself when I’m with you.” Dale Carnegie eloquently taught several generations how to make others feel good about themselves in our presence as a secret to winning friends and influencing people. If you want to build a Brand, it should be the same with your company. Focus on how your audience feels about themselves in the presence of and interactions with your company. Remember it’s not about you, it’s about them. 

When you do that with consistency, you earn trust. With trust comes loyalty. Build your Brand with a capital “B” around a positive energy exchange. Your audience will feel good in your Brand’s presence and that will become the story of your company, the seat of your Brand.