Brands march to a different drummer
For many who work in brands it’s increasingly clear that brands march to a different drummer than standard business operations. Brands are different. While many companies still plod to a drumbeat descended from galley ships, driven by heads-down routine, brands are totally tuned to a customer beat. They’re compelled to step it up and step out, slapping the rims, mixing with the locals, getting down with the pop in populace.
Something like this. (Open in a new tab, and if you wish, listen along.)
It’s not a sales pitch that makes brands connect
Brands are not amped echoes from remote corporate corridors, and it’s not a sales pitch that makes brands connect. Brands happen as companies and their products jam with customers. Brands are the rhythms of the untamed new, looking for a way up, looking for a way out, ready for a signal rip or riff to get things going.
Brands are not made for rank and file
Brands are not made for fife and drum, rank and file, blind obedience or snappy salutes. And brand feet don’t slog. They skip, hop, or better yet: dance.
Brands are not yes-men pushing “yes”. They’re iconoclasts and adventurers, eternal seekers of better and best. Customers grasp this truth in a heartbeat. In the presence of a brand, customers are unfurled and unfettered.
Brands can be bigger than business
In some ways brands are even bigger than business. Since brands see through customer eyes, and beat through customer bones, they can discover truths far beyond the corners of a spreadsheet. Plus, brands have numbers on their side: the infinite facets of culture, and the infinite improv of customers. Brands are wider, deeper, richer and more diverse than any regimen of rules.
Brands put companies in their place
What this means is that brands energize the larger-than-life pulse of a culture, circulated from companies to customers and back again, replenished and rejuvenated. And yes, brands put companies in their place. Companies may be asked to sit in, drop a few licks, see what takes, but in the end they’re fellow players in a larger jam. The pulse goes on, putting tired strokes to rest, leaping lazy veins, getting out and about in the grandest of avenues, making things jump.
Dionysus knew this, too
All this, of course, was well understood by our inestimable patron saint of brands. The dude could groove.