The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

It needs to create the cultural conditions for people to think/act in ways that benefit your client.

What ‘benefit’ means is both open to debate and individual contexts and needs.

But here’s where the problem lies.

Because for many companies, it’s no longer about creating the cultural conditions … it’s explaining EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT PEOPLE TO THINK, SEE AND DO.

What they think is ‘advertising’ is delusional dictator-ing. If dictatoring is a word.

And there’s 2 reasons why it’s delusional …

The first is people do what is in their best interests, not a companies. And so unless a company lets go of their fragile ego and God-complex, they’re never going to understand or resonate with their audience. Resulting in either being ignored, or forever ever having a utility style relationship.

The second is when your only focus is telling people what you want them to think, see and do … you often discover it’s exactly the same as what everybody else in your category wants people to think, see and do.

So you end up with this.

Brand gets a lot of stick these days.

Its whole role and value is being questioned.

But the irony is the problem isn’t with the value of brand, but the understanding of what some people think a brand is.

Because a brand isn’t contrived wrapping paper placed around a functional product feature … it’s an idea that is as distinctive for how it see’s the world as it appears in it.