PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE MY BOSS EXISTS - EDITION 1 OF THE NEW

Corporate Traditionalism Upholds Facade in a World Begging for Truth

If you can’t play the raunchiest expansion pack of Cards Against Humanity with your CEO, you’ve got 99 problems.

Let me explain.

The thing about business success is that everything (ops, biz dev, marketing, advertising, PR, culture building, revenue) - it all rides on brand strategy. Brand strategy is the foundation – it sets the scene for everything else.

And by “brand strategy,” we don’t just mean standardizing your logos and typeface and color palette. We mean the strategy behind your messaging. [What’s your vision (your “Why”), for the world, and how does your business idea help make that vision real? What’s your “How” and “What” you do? What’s your brand identity (hint: it’s borne from the founder’s personal identity).] These values (often simplified down into cheap mission and vision statements) are the difference between an OK brand and a world-changing brand.

So you’re probably wondering, how do you develop the world-changing kind?

To truly develop and embody an effective (alluring, authentic, unskippable) brand, here’s the secret: Everyone on the brand-building team MUST be an identity expert in their own right. In order to do good work for others (clients), branding teams must know themselves exceptionally well, along with the teammates, their boss, and the culture they want to create (that’s right - for their own office, as a branding agency, and for your’s, the client/business founder).

Only then can authenticity be transformed into copy. Only then can ideas make their way onto a landing page. Only then can a founder’s vision for the world come to life in a digital business era. It’s the only way true authenticity can be seen, molded, and expelled into the world as a successful brand.

Personal emotional intelligence and self-worth are at the root of how the world operates.

Need examples?

If you’re insecure in your abilities, you’ll always be at a job that allows you to sell yourself short (including CEOs, interns, and everything in between).

If you’re confused about your self-worth, your teammates will see that, and opportunities run down the drain (for your own professional growth, for what the team thinks they can accomplish for the client).

If an intern can’t be honest with the CEO, see each other as just people, and nurture that culture, sorry, but you’re breeding inauthenticity in a world where brands must be authentic in order to thrive.

Traditionalism upholds facade and vice versa. If your boss won’t play Cards Against Humanity with you, it means they’re hiding something. If you think playing a raunchy game in the conference room will negatively impact something about corporate life, GOOD. Some institutions deserve to fall.

Inauthentic brands (read: many of the most long-standing corporations in America) are under the harshest magnifying glass as of the 2020s. Whereas authentic brands scoot along on their vision/plans exactly as they should. (It’s why bigger brands are trying to give themselves an authentic face by designating a single thought leader to represent them or paying influencers for their own separate authentically-built following).

So we weren’t kidding when we said Cards Against Humanity is a great measuring stick and prediction tool for business success.

When so much rides on authenticity, when a business’ future lies in the balance, you’d better make sure it starts with your branding, which starts with your brand-building people, and their ability to be real with each other.