The Open-Ended Brand

The human imagination is infinitely powerful and profound. It allows each person to bring to the work of art something that is unique to him or her. Five people looking at the same painting will not see it in the same way. Yet the work of art will speak to each of them in their own language. That's the wonder of mystery. - John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

In my worldview, $3000 suits are a colossal waste of money. That's six months rent, or enough to fund practically all my own expenses on the grassroots tsunami anniversary storytelling project to Thailand and India this winter.

To frame my worldview better: A friend was moving to Hawaii this March and his Prius was up for sale. I seriously considered buying it. I remembered that $14K could be better spent on projects. The clincher: The truth was I wanted the car because my ten-year-old beater is a continuing source of shame and embarrassment in status-conscious Silicon Valley. Which means that it's tremendously valuable teacher of fearlessness. (In other words, I'll buy a new car only when I'm not anxious whatsoever about my "image.")

I know that Hugh is a big fan of Seth's new All Marketers Are Liars. (For the record, I'm of mixed opinions on the book, but that's another story.) However, English Cut doesn't nessarily tell a story to fit a particular worldview.(I'm certainly not in the target market for a bespoke tailored suit, but I am a maven and connector and women do influence purchases.)

To me, the English Cut story is not necessarily one about luxury goods. It's about celebrating "small is beautiful." It's about enabling an artisan whose medium is cloth. It's about handcrafted versus mass-produced. Now that's worth $3000.

It's not quite the same as witnessing the the last of the Navajo rugmakers. (They have their own sheep grazing on small farms, shorn their own wool, dye their own yarn with wild plum, sagebrush, lupine flowers, and wild walnuts among other natural ingredients). Yet it evokes a bit of that "this just might be the last generation" aura.

You, however, might see an altogether different story than I see.

One of the main themes in Alex Wipperfurth's Brand Hijack is that the brand meaning "means different things to different groups of people." In other words, it's practically a "blank canvas" for self-expression by the customer... to be distinguished from a "conventional" (non-hijacked) brand which "strives for a single-minded proposition".

In art, mystery is touched through understatement and implication. Mystery abhors naked exposure and explanation. In the early years of cinema, many films were characterized by the quality of understatement and implications. Film directors in those days could make your heart race with mere suggestion, letting the mind fill in the blanks. More recently, Hitchcock could horrify you with a passing shadow. By contrast, modern films blatently strive for shock effect, turning the viewer into a voyeur, rather than an active participant. Modern war movies depict carnage, bodies disintegrating in slow motion.

In a collection of photographs and poems that Minor White produced during World War II, there are no images of the battlefront, no explicit violence, no blood or gore. Just portraits of soldiers. Yet, in them, I see more horror and sadness of war and death than in any of the graphic Associated Press wire photos and news releases that we are all being fed. - John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

I know I'm late to the party, but this notion of telling a story to a worldview (a more emotional "want rather than need" twist to "unique value propositions" and "positioning") has been on my radar for a post for some time. (In fact, the multiplicity of worldviews is a theme in my More Space essay.)

I should add there can be no more charming dissenter than Grant McCracken...just read the opening to his post, Brands: Fresh and Frozen). Snippets follow:

The moment that brands presume to tell a larger story, this is the very moment when brands cease to serve us well. "Declare a world view"? Alex, you little fascist. [My bad: the passages quoted from Alex Wipperfurth's book are taken out of context and don't convey the bottom-up, grassroots, co-creative kernel of Brand Hijack.]

There may have been a time when consumers looked for all-embracing, pre-fabricated concepts. ("I am a Audi kind of person.") There was a time when some brands thought they could sell more or less embracing concepts ("I am a Nike kind of guy.") There certainly was a time when intellectuals got their knickers in a knot at the idea that either of these fictions might come to pass...

But in point of fact, the consumer society works as a cultural system precisely because consumers are free to choose products but also the cultural meanings contained in this products. There are no sole-source suppliers of these meanings. - Grant McCracken

Ah, yes, you're absolutely right Grant. In all fairness, this is more typical of Brand Hijack and yet still doesn't quite capture it:

Unlike most brands, Red Bull doesn't have to deliver a single value proposition to its consumers (i.e. Tide washes whiter, Bounty-the quicker picker-upper). Instead, the company has been incredibly successful over time and across geographies, in standing for something broader and more flexible: energy and stimulation. The result is that Red Bull can mean different things to different people. Consumers can interpret the brand in their own ways without affecting its core function. Brandweek's Ken Hein explains:

Ask someone to define it and the answers will vary. For instance, The Fire Island (N.Y.) News has dubbed it "The new sex drink," while a 13-year-old booy in a local deli said, "Me inspira a bailar" ("It makes me dance"). And, according to a waitress in a New York wine bar, "If you mix it with cough syrup, it makes your cold go away."

From truck drivers to clubbers to extreme sports enthusiasts, Red Bull weaves itself into the lives of very different groups of people without ostracizing any of them. It effortlessly crosses socioeconomic boundaries. The company delivers the message that there is no right way to use Red Bull, no code of conduct - for consumers, that is. - Alex Wipperfurth, Brand Hijack

Like Zen art, I believe the brands of the future will be open-ended in so many ways beyond even the scope of this post. John Daido Loori deftly touches on this:

Zen art is open-ended. The enso or Zen circle, a symbol of enlightenment, for example, is almost always left open. The missing piece is to be supplied by the viewer. In completing the brushwork, the viewer gets involved and experiences a sense of completion in the art. Haiku only presents a glimpse, yet its emotional impact can be enormous because the reader has room to enter and create the full picture. The poet only provides the seed.

Because the message in Zen art is never spelled out, it draws you in, inviting you to probe the deeper layers of the experience. - John Daido Loori, The Zen of Creativity

p.s. My Saved From Freezing post is multi-layered. It started with the personal/spiritual which was the richest layer, then I added the journalistic part, and brands were an afterthought. What was going through my mind? In that context, I meant frozen brands in terms of ones that are devoid of any spark of life and humanity and connection. I met a young journalist (she herself did very well academically) that recently finished a piece on valedictorians. She was desparate to pull forth a sense of their passion and purpose and dreams to tell the story. "They simply wanted to excel at excelling." There's a parallel here to companies that rubs off on brands. Too many companies are stripped of a brander social context, a customer context, a human-to-human context.

p.p.s. To Steve Portigal's question on my personal brand. (Steve's right, a bio is not a brand.) Well, Colleen (once an ad copy writer) says I'm the Zen Mistress of Business - which is pretty good. I prefer to be a person rather than a brand myself. This approach allows me to be more dynamic, impervious to the past, and evolve much quicker than my brand could possibly catch up to.

Comments

[hugh macleod]

Thanks for the kind words re. English Cut =)

I think the good brands (Starbucks etc) work because they are about something BIGGER tan themselves.

Everybody wants to be part of something. Everybody wants to be able say "I was there".

Give them the chance to say that, even at the $3-coffee level, and, like the movie says, they will come.

Mark Earls talks quite eloquently about this in his "Bananas... and the death of marketing" book.

[brian moffatt]

Branding is an invitation at best, a kind of demand at worst.

Open ends and implication. Engagement. Good stuff.

I haven't gone through your whole barrel o' links, I just have to say I was amused by some of the comments at Grant's blog.

Very strange. I don't know you, yet I feel I do from reading your blog posts. I have some sense. I don't know Hugh at gapingvoid or Thomas at English Cut but I feel I know them, or recognize something in them or about them.

What is Steve Portigal missing?

He's running to the general as opposed to the particular. Aggregating, compiling, meta-synthesizing. Human interaction in a petri dish. I have to admit I find the sort of work he does to be fascinating. Digging in, interviewing...but...here's the odd part...I don't think I would ever, ever, know who he is.

Distance guarantees his success, too, I'm sure.

So it's not so much what he is mising I guess, as what I am missing, and what I am missing is this: in reading his story he is leaving nothing out. His story is a closed circle, with definite conclusions, drawn from the explicit.

This fascinates me no end. I have two family members - one a psychiatrist, the other a market researcher - who are without a doubt two of the worst listeners I know.

You'd think...huh?

I guess some people just like to sit back and watch tango competitions, the rhythmn never swaying them much, the urge to get up and dance simply absent.

You throw a party, there's no guarantee it's going to be a bustup good time.

There's no "Must be there, so I can say I was there" It's all a big If. Throw it out there and see what sticks. That's soul. You got it or you don't.