Greek pottery showing a ritual sacrifice to a consensual hallucination - a god thought to exist - so that some aspect of reality will be positively affected.I am over brands.
As consensual hallucinations, brands are abstract planes that, the more we talk about them, the more we remove ourselves from the everyday world and the everyday practical concerns of people and companies. Doing so makes us talk about things and, therefore, do things that are not based in reality or have any consequence.
So I beg of us, let’s get real because brands don’t exist in the form we talk about them:
- They are not layered like onions.
- You cannot wear them.
- Brands cannot own a word, a color, an idea, a character...anything. You will never find a legal document with “Burger King” penned on the line marked “Please sign here.”
- There is nothing trustworthy, sexy, witty, approachable or sophisticated about them. Brands do not emote.
- An old unwashed sock has more utility than a brand.
- You do not find brands tending gardens, fixing the gutter or vacuuming the floors. They do not live in neighborhoods.
- A brand cannot talk – or, God forbid, “whisper” – to me. My last few telephone bills show no record of a brand calling me or vice versa.
- Can you tell me what a brand looks like? Me neither. So how can we measure such thing as a brand image?
- Brand language. Really?
- Momentum is the product of the mass x the velocity of an object. Brands have neither. So why do we measure brand momentum?
- Brands are not self-aware entities. They do not have ethics, values or morals. So how the hell do they have philosophies?
- Brands cannot be my friends on Facebook. They don’t have fingers to type.
- Brand do not need stewards. Brand stewardship assumes a brand is an object consciously looking for its proper place. In truth, they are less like Feival and more like weather – something amorphous that exists, due to millions of systematic reasons, with no end goal.
- “Brand manager” is an oxymoron.
Now, I realize, you will respond, “Well, of course. What we’re really talking about is companies. We just say ‘brands.’”
Then, I beg, why can’t we just say “companies” to begin with?
Let’s call a spade a spade.
It’s not a brand. It’s a company.
It’s not a brand. It’s a product.
It’s not a brand. It’s a logo.
It’s not a brand. It’s popular perception.
It’s not the brand language. It’s the visual look.
It’s not brand utility. It’s a tool.
It’s not brand conversation. It’s an interaction between a company employee and John Q. Public.
It’s not a brand conversation. It’s a person reading an ad.
It’s not your brand equity, brand story or brand DNA. It’s your company’s history.
It’s not…ugh, that list could go on forever…
I’m done.
I’m so over brands.
9 comments:
I think it's very healthy to question these things.
Having said that, isn't it suspicious that you had to reference so many different things to say "it's not a brand"?
Wouldn't you say that a brand is, precisely, the sum of all those things, and not any one of them in particular? (since all of them are other things with their own names)?
Good point. A brand is all of those things, yet that is exactly why I don't like the term brand.
It stands for everything and, in doing so, it stands for nothing.
Yet, when people use the term "brand" in conversations, they are often talking about one specific thing: the company, the product, the logo, public perception...
Just today, in fact, I heard a CEO use the word "brand" as a synonym for product.
If business people are trying to be directive and create clarity, shouldn't they use specific, unambiguous words instead of gassy catch-all ones?
If a CEO comes to me and asks, "We need to fix our brand." I have no idea what he means. I would waste the next 2 hours getting him to articulate what he specifically means: "Our visual look is too old. We need to update it."
thank you for this post leland. i really needed to read this today ;)
even worse than standing for nothing, the word "brand" suggests that there is a mysterious something beyond the company or product that can somehow be willed into existence (or, more likely, advertised into existence?).
questioning the use of the word "brand" leads to asking just the right questions, in my opinion.
life is what happens while u make (brand) plans.
I wonder if this sentiment is just
the planner Maschmeyer cathing up with the human Maschmeyer?
I kinda feel that most people living lives already see stuff from this point of view. It's just that the bubble profesionals live that makes it hard to distinguish fact from fiction. Now I am not saying that the use of the term branding has been useless, it has spawned great thinking, but it just seem to me that is has lost the little value it once had.
Reminds me of how in Holland all the janitors were called facility managers. This in an attempt to promote a better image of the job. Now it's become more of running joke, because the basic work has not been changed.
Dino,
Bingo.
Niko,
This absolutely is the planner catching up with the human. As I've read, practiced and wanged on about brand theory, I've progressively developed a reflex where, when I encounter it, I barf.
It's a funny transition. The more I delved into abstract theory, the more I wanted to find concreteness. The more I tried to build models for brands, the more I wanted to hear stories of companies and people, instead.
My work now is built around these things: Concreteness, stories, and patterns. You know, the way humans think.
perhaps we should start by reframing the meaning of the word brand. if enough people (planners in position of power) start using it as derogatory term, it would/could force people to change their actions and views with regards to it..
" Time to separate the pros from the cons
The platinum from the bronze
That butter soft shit from that leather on the Fonz
A S1 diamond from a eye class don
A Cham' Dom' sipper from a Rosay drinker"
Brooklyn Finest: Jay-z ft Nototious B.I.G
Interesting! Kind of like the how the following quote reframes advertising:
"advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."
Good stuff. I've always liked and believed in the simple notion that a brand is a contract, with the consumer expectations being the micetype. You fulfill the contract (at least) and you have a brand experience. You fall short and you void the contract, lose the customer and, eventually, the brand dies. All the other stuff is just points of human contact.
Sorry, that last bit -- just points of human contact-- was too glib even for me. Yeah, it's more. At times it's genuine craft. But, to me, it's still all really about the contract, the covenant, the respect.
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