Weekend food for thought. I've had email either inquiring about and/or referencing my personal 'brand-building' approach.
I'll probably explore this more next week. More than likely as part of the Confessions of A Marketer's Existential Crisis. (Nope, not a personal existential crisis - been-there-done-that - but one around the role of marketing and marketers in the future.)
Aha! In my attempts to answer this The Brand Called You! question I now understand at a deeper level what Hugh MacLeod means and John Winsor means when they say branding is backwards. (And skimming through the new The Culting of Brands sealed it.)
This is how I look at it: I'm not developing a brand, I'm developing my Self. The clearer I am about who I am, the more that's reflected clearly. And that's where I focus. What you think you see as quote branding unquote is simply a side-effect.
And but of course. Yes, there's a parallel to companies.
A side-effect. Yes, I think that's a very interesting way to view the whole branding mullarkey. The systems thinkers might see brands as emergent properties of the system; a lot of conventional "branding" seems to be an attempt to legislate for qualities in a way that may not capture how things work in reality.
As I'm fond of pointing out, it's simply not easy to replicate a company - otherwise more airlines would be like Southwest and more computer companies like Dell.
The trouble (or good thing) about the emergent view is that it would spare us the need to listen to all those experts lecturing us on how to; and instead we could have the adventure of discovering and exploring what actually works for us...
I'm looking forward to hearing more...
Posted by: Johnnie Moore | Nov 20, 2004 at 11:14 PM
"One's art is not the chief end of life but an accident in one's search for reality"
-William Butler Yeats
Once again we see there’s no difference between an entrepreneur and an artist.
I agree with Johnnie. Branding experts, get out of the way.
Posted by: Brett | Nov 22, 2004 at 04:49 PM