Brand genetics: starting with leadership,
the lessons and coding of story and communications,
rippling from the one —
to billions.
Tim Westergren, the genetics of sound, legacy and the one to the one.
Opening the box of Pandora, nearly ten years back, I’d had the opening exposure to Tim Westergren. Interestingly, there was some reach, some connection, where a direct communication — from Tim Westergren — to Tim Girvin flowed as easily as a whispered conversation. The point is, back then, there was a quiet patience of the CEO and founding sonic geneticist to people that were interested in his brand.
The issue lies in the spirit of stance —
what’s the standing pattern of the person that started, and drives the brand?
What does the brand, and the leader, stand for?
Is the leader open, or is the leader closed?
We well know those that are quiet — hiding in a manner — behind the shield of their brand standard, doing the closely-held yet publicly silent aspect of presence. They are there, but they are not. Too quiet, for real presence — for presence is presentation; it’s being in the center, scene in seen — which is to “make one’s presence felt” founded on the etymology of “being at hand.”
That means — “right here.”
What he recognized in the beginning is the rippling reach of evangelism. When the CEO, the “center experience offerer” of a brand — the founding brand-fire of that persona and driving force of energy — circulates, it’s a stone’s drop ripple. Starts with the one, rippling to the many. It’s interesting, the nature of the person to the personable, the brand to the genetics of the story and how that’s spread to community.
In a manner, the allegory of the Pandora brand, and the foundational heritage of the Music Genome Project — I think about codes, layers of language and context that reach back and forth into the quality of the person, the persona, the personable — the leader, the principles, the principal. They’re all layers of the story between the life of the one and the lives of the millions that might be lying in connection.
So, signing up for the monthly service attribute from Pandora | ONE, the first thing that I got, instantly,
was a letter directly from Tim Westergren.
How different that other sign ups — links to, for example:
Gilt, Anthropologie, MAC, Benefit, Guerlain, other brand relationships — just off the top of mind recollection, there’s never a connection with a person, a story, something that links me in — instead: it’s the company itself.
Nothing more.
The idea of who cares is — “who cares?” That goes both ways — one, “I care.” We care.
Who cares?
“I, the leader, the founder of this brand — I actually care what you’re saying.”
The last link to some gesture of human / leadership connectedness would’ve been Howard Schultz.
We stay in touch — might be a siting at an opening; but there’s a connection, bolstered by Girvin blogs on the evolutions of the Starbucks brand.
Even in the big world, the most sense of human connectedness, these days, will be evident in the spirit of how people connect with each other. Really, when it comes down to it, brand relationships, the storytelling of human and brand; or the narrative of human brands and the stories that they tell.
T I M
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BUILDING BRANDS AROUND HUMANS | The strategies of rippling genius