So last week Forest played Blackpool in the 2nd leg of the playoffs.
Whilst we’d lost the first leg 2-1, I had high, high hopes of us coming good when they came to our ground – a place where we’d not lost in 20 games.
Even though it was going to be played in the middle of the night, there was no way I was going to miss it, so I went to bed early and set the alarm for 2:30am.
Anyway, a few hours passed and the alarm went off and the first thing that hit me was confusion.
You see I had fallen asleep and in my dream I had dreamt they had won 2-0 … a score that would have secured their progression to the grand playoff final.
However it gets worse, because in my dream, I also dreamt I‘d woken up in a panic realising that I’d only dreamt that score only to be ridiculously happy and relieved when I logged on to BBC.com and found that 2 goal result had actually turned into reality.
So imagine how weird and fearful it felt when I realised [1] I had only dreamt I was awake [2] they hadn’t won 2-0 and [3] the match hadn’t even started yet.
As we all know – despite a very bright start – we ended up losing 3-4 and our hopes of a return to where we belong were dashed for another year … however the thing I find interesting is that my love for my team/brand is so strong that it not only infiltrated my dreams, but positively affected my emotions and feelings.
There’s plenty of talk about how great brands affect people – and there’s a general acceptance that the greatest brands tend to be the ones that live and play within people’s/societies lives – however when a brand can affect your sleep and mood simply through the anticipation you have of interacting/experiencing/engaging with it again, then I would say the number of truly great brands is far less than many in our business claim.
For me a great brand isn’t about sales or profit [though obviously they are very important components] … it’s about an irrational love …. where it affects what you do and feel beyond rational reason.
There will be many reasons for this behaviour … many developed over many years … but as Steve Henry once said to me, if you can only give one reason why you love something, then you don’t really love it, you’re simply flirting with the idea of it.