The Deep Quest to Know a Brand
Earlier in my life I was an inveterate spelunker, a cave explorer.
In a manner, exploring caves is a richly metaphoric enterprise.
You go deep into the heart of the earth, in winding, supremely dark and likely unknowable and risky places, not able to use much of a map to find one’s way — you’re going up, you’re going down, you’re on the level. But you go deep and deeper to know the subterranean character of the earth. Courage would be implied, because — even in teams — the work of way-finding can feel lonely.
In a meditation about the pathfinding in caverns, the roped descent and ascension up and out to the light. What I contemplate is journey — the journey from the Light to the Dark and the Light again — risk, uncertainty, experiment and tiresome trialways to go, or ways to loss.
Our lives go like that — good times, synergism, integration, rupture and distraction, line deviation, loss and evanescence. Where to?
Brands,
being inherently
human-made,
human-served,
human-serving,
link to that notation of life:
the quest for beauty and
holistic richness — the only way to
get into them is to go deep.
Visit.
Talk to people.
Sit in their buildings.
Watch — what they do.
Wonder — the why of their journey.
Wander — in search of the unexpected.
Go to the factories.
Look in the stores.
To know more, you go deeper.
In the journey to know a brand —
like the summiting of a peak or
the hunt to the center of the Earth —
the deeper you prep your journey, the more
open your eyes will be.
Listen first.
Talk more.
See more.
Journey further.
What comes forward is that
the more that you know the proposition of a team,
that is
working around a brand,
that has built a brand,
working in a branded world —
and
the more you walk
their path,
their house,
their store
and their story,
the more you can support them,
newly channeled.
The deeper and more intimately you commit to
knowing,
the more you can help the aligning of
their compass indices to another
point on the horizon.
You know it.
Because you’ve been there.
Touching.
Sensing.
Listening.
Leaning in.
Going deep.
Brand spelunking —
it’s better to be there to truly know it, to be it.
Otherwise, it’s just theory.
And in these days,
theory doesn’t hold water,
it just drains away.
Practice
makes
persistent
perfection.
Tim | Decatur Island Studios
…..
G I R V I N | BRANDS BASED ON GENIUS
BUILDING STRATEGY AROUND PEOPLE
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