Brands are characters in a story. They have a personality. They interact with others. Each brand has a personality which says something about the people behind it and the product it sells.
You have your high school jock brands – captain of the football team, good looking, rugged. Aspiring brands want to be them, and doting brands want to er, partner with them. They have everything going for them if they don’t believe too much of their own press, and continually work towards bettering themselves.
You have your acne prone super nerd brands, where they’re not so much worried about what they look like or what they’re wearing as they are about facts, figures, formulas and cutting edge technology. They’ll end up making loads of money – but only if their top-shelf girlfriend ( ie marketing company ) gives them an extreme makeover and trains them in social interaction. ( The geeks always end up with the best girls… )
The hot bombshell brands look great, sound good and know a lot of jock brands.( see doting… ) They know when curves are in and corners are out. They know the new black before the rest of us and have any number of wanna be brands hanging out with them just so they look good and can meet the jocks. But of course beneath the surface is a brand with not a lot of great ideas, nothing of real value to offer others. They’ll most likely change their corporate ID every 18 months and be almost indistinguishable from who they were a year ago. ( You’ll not often see them maintaining strong partnerships with other brands for very long either… )
Your bully brands actively seek to destroy other brands. They’ll pick the ones that are often the most threat and destroy their public image until everyone starts to believe them. The problem is that they spend so much time trying to pick on others they don’t realise the damage they are doing to their own reputation – and the bridges they are burning that lead to future opportunities. Bully brands demand respect – but rarely get it.
Your Muso brands are all about staying true to the vibe – to the point where they end up missing business opportunities and possibly becoming irrelevant. Every now and then when the stars align, a Muso brand will hit the big time – they didn’t quite know how they did it, so they’re just enjoyingtherideman.com ( it doesn’t exist fyi )
If you look through your high school yearbook – you find fascinating insights into personalities and their social interaction. As you look over each face, they trigger a series of emotions – good, bad or indifferent.
When you put your brand on a page with the other brands in your yearbook – what emotions does it trigger? What do others say about you? Who do you want to be?
