A Person, a Presence, a Brand
I was working outside of the city,
treasure-hunting.
Actually, I was working inside a brand, their teams, looking for treasure — those glimmering and glistening points of compassed reference, the surveilled pin-pricks of a brand mapping, that define a unique territory, a hidden story, a concealed or forgotten opportunity for positioning.
I call it treasure.
Treasure hunting. Treasure finding.
TREASURE
HUNTER.
In the Himalaya, this person is called Terton.
Finding treasure.
It’s something that is difficult to cull in a workshop,
unless it’s operating from a foundation of an exceptionally researched and audited investigation of an enterprise.
But the real treasure of a brand are the shimmering people that work the magic of a brand — each story a telling that comes from them, their participation, involvement and enthrallment, in and around an enterprise.
I once met a shimmering person.
Light came from them,
a kind of clear shining,
a gleam in the eye,
a light-filled smile and
enthusiastically captivating sensing of light, energy —
and in
what etymologists might offer:
an indwelling of divinity.
Light, a magical influence, a presence could be aligned to people’s experience of the divine — an extraordinary view, a vista of inestimable beauty is that kind of experience. Amazing, something unseen, or rarely so — a scene seen of
mysterium tremendum et fascinans — a shocking, if not electrifying, moment.
People can be like that — enthralled, fascinated, compelled, committed — building something marvelous.
And people build dreams, and brands —
enterprises that make things.
What is a shining brand?
What examples come to mind?
In asking others,
two references come
to a common answer.
People invariably offer:
Disney
and
Apple.
Interestingly, Apple played on its notation of “magic” in its propositions for iPad — a magical device. That’s been explained in the premise that the magic isn’t in the hardware, but how humans use it.
And the interplay of all these examinations come back to
the bridge between the notion of humanity and feelingness and the motion to build something grander than the one alone, but rather the leadership circles and teams, communities and rippling potentials that reach out, and out. And out.
When I think of shimmering, I combine the layering of experiential levels — and weave them together. So in that, Disney’s efforts in holistic design might align storytelling, emotionality, memory and mind.
So it shimmers.
I recall when I was working with Steve Jobs and
my early runs to Apple,
I felt that shimmering.
Shine.
More.
Often.
And I worked in both places —
Disney and Apple —
so those touch points of sensual connectivity,
the adhesion of sensation,
they ripple
and echo.
So I think about a park.
A big park.
And a place that might be inside that place — that reaches out to that deeper place, brands built by people to find the shimmering , indeed the shining of inspiration — and weaving the human inside the layering of that experience.
And isn’t that spiritual?
It’s deeper, it draws the participant into a transformative moment, the momentum of the miraculous is oftentimes a matter of perception.
What you see? What you know? What you sense?
What you’re looking for?
And that might be it.
In the look for the shimmering,
the pursuit of shining,
it is like that:
you have to look.
Tim | GIRVIN OSEAN STUDIOS
––––
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