Defining locality and brand presence
What is on the surface
and lies beneath?
I was walking in the dark — that, a metaphor unto itself — and looking on the street, with the light filtering and flickering in the wind-riven trees, casting quivering shadows in the distant street lights, and I found this spray-painted sign; and like many meditations, I contemplated that marking:
LOCATE->.
What does that mean? There’s something there, beneath the surface.
To a brand strategist, that might mean: shadow brand.
What is the facing of a brand to the Light;
and what is
the facing of the brand in shadow?
What lies on the surface,
and what lies beneath?
Our work in brand tends to focus on the emotional, the spiritual, the soulful side of human experiences —
how are the people inside there?
What are they doing?
Are they happy?
Are they sad?
Culturally, brands, in their humanity, will be about what is done for people and their relationships. What, in their experience do they hold in that world? If anything, is there a relating, a carrying away – a story held? And will that story be their story?
T[here] — do they take it there, do they hold it — here?
Close to heart?
In a manner, any quest for the heart and soul of brand relates to the humanity of it —
who works on it, what do they believe in, why are they there?
In our work — we seek out their location. In this brand, really where are they?
When one ponders this question for a client, invariably that meditation would suggest a introspective examination — where are you?
In the proposition of time, that location will always be a journey — you didn’t get to where you are without a journey; and like a brand, the point of that journey will be a tendril line of discovering.
Nodes, flowers, fragrant notes and aural melodies, tastes, insight whorls and notations shall show themselves.
It would be up to you,
your teams,
your enterprises,
your offerings to be open and
to listen to them.
When I work on a brand,
I like to go there,
for precisely that meaning.
To find the meaning.
The memory.
The mind.
Who’s there,
what are they doing,
why are they there?
And where are they?
As a journeyer into the heart and soul of brand, to locate that, you need to go there.
To find the Light.
And the shadow.
TIM | PORTLAND, OR
…..
GIRVIN DESIGN | SEATTLE | FINDING WOWNESS
INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
BRANDQUEST® TRUTH
CREATING STRATEGIES, PRODUCTS,
IDEAS FOR CHANGE.
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