Dionysus: patron saint of brands
Every craft and every profession needs a patron saint. Your patron saint is the spiritual power and muse to tune your senses, watch your six, and ease the path ahead. It’s someone you can commune with on the Ducati, in the midst of a do-or-die decision, or while laying out the bills for a case of 2004 Antinori Tignanello.
People graced by a patron saint have that special glow. Their inner dashboard radiates a confidence of connection.
So, who’s the patron saint of brands?
Dionysus: patron saint of brands
That’s easy. It’s Dionysus, the edge-god of art, passion, creation and wine, Mr. Wild Side himself, ecstasy in excelsis, musician, dancer, fount of thoughts unbridled, lust undying. Like great brands, Dionysus unfolds the untamed. He pushes limits. In a world of tepid convention, he’s the sensual feast of free.
Not for the meek
Dionysus is not for the meek—but neither are brands. He’s a non-stop force of creative destruction, blasting the current context for something bigger and better, shredding, melding, re-shaping, re-birthing. He may be momentarily satiated, but satisfied—never. He doesn’t let brands coast, or calcify.
Brand-builders can’t have limits
Dionysus is the perfect patron saint for brands because brand builders can’t have limits. Their mission is to bring products to life, pushing, pulling and transporting customers beyond the grind, into new contexts of living. Brand builders don’t just strut upon a stage; they cook up new stages. Dionysus fuels their brew. (Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne above captures some of the Dionysian fire.)
The Dionysian license to create
Vital question: If you’re a brand builder, does having Dionysus as your patron saint grant you the license to let your senses soar and your creative juices run wild?
Vital answer: Only if the essence of your creation is a higher form of customer. (Brands aim high. Don’t waste your powers on trivia.)
Dionysian brands
There are brands, and then there are Dionysian brands. Dionysian brands are a ferment of mind and matter. Instead of being some concocted add-on, or a cheap-rent façade, they’re primordial and potent, delivering visceral value, procreating customers, infusing every synapse of company being. They’re passion from the core. You, the brand builder, are the music, the grapes and the dance. Step one is to Unzip Your Brand.
May 20th, 2006 at 3:00 am
I like it—great thoughts here, Brian!
May 20th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
Well, I think it’s about time that brand builders got a patron saint who can lead them into battle. Building brands is the most demanding practice in business because it’s the practice of creating customers (as opposed to “targeting” them). I like Dionysus because he embraces the extreme–and has a jolly good time in the process. Sounds like a brand kind of guy to me.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:02 am
[...] Brand kiss—or commodity kiss? This is where brands come in—or should come in. Brands are value engines, with protean powers. (Any practice with Dionysus as its patron saint is a force to be reckoned with.) It’s up to the brand to translate the blood, sweat and gears of the commoditized production process into a bountiful brand kiss when the buyer opens the box. That’s the customer payoff. [...]
January 7th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
[...] All this, of course, was well understood by our inestimable patron saint of brands. The dude could groove. [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
[...] Yes, this is a new and different brand team. Instead of creating perceptions, their mission is to create customers. Their patron saint makes high demands, and pays high rewards. [...]
December 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Dionysos is not a mere “saint” — He is the awe-inspiring God of passion, fertility, mystery and divine ecstasy.
He was one of the most influential and widely worshipped Gods of the ancient world, and He is also one of the most influential and widely worshipped Gods of the current Pagan renaissance that is happening today.
Here’ss a page with many references on this most beautiful and holy of Gods:
http://www.baubo5.com/dionysos.html
Here are just a few of today’s worshippers of Dionysos,
and the online shrines they have created in His honor:
http://www.templedionysos.com/
http://www.winterscapes.com/sannion/
http://www.winterscapes.com/thiasoslusios/theos.htm
http://www.hermeticfellowship.org/Dionysion/Dionysion.html
http://www.wildivine.org/dionysos.htm
Given our passionate devotion and worship to our God, and the growing profusion of Dionysian religion today, I would suggest that He is not really the best candidate for a “patron saint of brands.” That is about as inappropriate and disrespectful as choosing Jesus or the Buddha as “the patron saint of indoor plumbing.”
Please stop treating devout Pagans — and pagan religions, and pagan Gods — as if we were the only religious group that does not matter, and whose sacred heritage you can safely trample all over, as a joke. That is nothing short of blatant religious bigotry. You should be ashamed of yourself.
The next time you need somebody’s deity to make fun of, maybe try Jehovah or Jesus or Allah. They don’t get picked on quite so often these days; and since their devotees have historically made it their business to denigrate other people’s Gods and even destroy their temples and holy statues, then maybe it’s time for a little turnabout, all in the name of fairness.
December 30th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Dee,
Thank you for your comments. I do believe we’re in fundamental agreement on the value of Dionysus to humankind. By making Dionysus the Patron Saint of Brands, which is a figurative position, I don’t demean, or diminish in any way, the creative force that runs through Dionysus. He becomes a model for brands and brand builders, just as he was a creative inspiration and model for the arts—and for living life to its limits—in classical Greece. I’m not lowering Dionysus to the numbing level of the mass of brands today. I want brands to rise to his level. Brands are a creative endeavor. They need Dionysus just as much as the rest of us.