More on Brand as Self

Looks like I was psychically tracking on the same wavelength as Mark at Fouroboros... I was just alerted to his post on Brain, Metaphor, Archetype, Brand, Part II, where he goes into much more eloquent detail on brand as self:

Brand is not product. Not price. Not approachability, nor attitude. Brand is not ego or persona. It is the "self" Carl Jung described. That is, it's the quieter, hopeful, original part of a person, place or thing that can't be neatly tagged yet fits naturally and effortlessly. And it grows along with its adherents and admirers. Better still, it helps them grow. In this way, brands mirror the ambition of a consumer and reveal themselves as tools for the journey of becoming the idealized self we saw in the Statue of Liberty example... So. If brand is not just a suit you put over a flabby body in order to get a date, what's the key to being "real"? Simple. View things as a transformational journey, exactly as the self does. And understand and frame your particular brand, organization and environment as tools and shelter with deeply symbolic power for the trip.

I love his analogy of brand as a 'suit over a flabby body.' Great stuff; go read it. He clearly put a lot more thought into the subject than I did during my coffee time on Saturday morning!

Comments

[Peter Davis]

The result of a story audit is clarity...to arrive at a controlling idea or high concept, the well from which all ideas and actions spring. Converting this high concept to a compelling story puts executive, managers, employees, customers and investors on hte same page, moving in the same direction, applying the same strategy, reinforcing the same values while speaking the cusotmers language.

The Knowledge Corporation is fun to work with.

[kirsten]

Anybody heard of The Knowledge Corp? They do "Story Audits" for corporations. A symbolic means of exploring an organization's self and heros. Worth a look...www.theknowledgecorp.com. Their site is kinda clunky...BUT they have put their proprietary story audit out there as a PDF for everyone to read.

re:invention's BLOG has been hit by a BLOGGER virus (or so they tell me) and our template is gone. So we are in the process of redesign and can't post good stuff. In the meantime...we're sharing this idea here with you.