While every brand has its own issues, challenges, assets and opportunities, there is a core crew vital to the successful voyage of all brands in this age, no matter what ocean they’re sailing and no matter what cargo they’re carrying.
This crew numbers five, their names are these: The Enchanter, The Mapmaker, The Alchemist, The Dreamer and The Confidante.
The Enchanter
He charts the consumer’s breathtaking access to products, the immediacy of the branded experience, the bold transparency between manufacturer and purchaser, the hum of crowd sourcing, the murmur of social media, the limitless bounty of apps.
Nothing escapes him.
He is troubled that in their attempt to deliver a new intimacy to the brand/customer relationship, these brilliant new tools are undoing some of the vital stitching they believe they’re strengthening.
He will tell you that ‘the essential sense of wonder’ that sustains all great brands is at risk.
He refers to that ever-so-slight distance from our grasp that fires the aspiration of ownership and that Groucho Marx had it right when he said “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”
Then with a smile that seems both ageless and new, he will reach for the power of storytelling to re-instate the wonder.
It is The Enchanter who tells the stories that will always make Groucho want to belong to the club.
The Confidante
She knows why people buy.
She knows the secret places in the human heart that brands speak to.
She can keep the secret and gently braid the necessary evidence into her work.
A knowing nod that the brand understands its buyer.
She knows what market research doesn’t extract, focus groups never share and no amount of data will ever capture: that all purchase decisions are emotional, it’s just that they’re explained rationally.
She knows that despite the rapidity of change, the beguiling new gurus and the endless posses of tech-evangelists, a brand is (and always has been) that Mona Lisa smile that connects us to our unspoken needs and desires, our dream states, our quest for status, companionship, esteem, a moment no matter how brief, of a complete yet illusionary fulfillment.
She knows this is the reason why marketing has more to do with the humanities than with science or art.
The Alchemist
He holds two bowls.
The one is filled with the silver mercury of technology, able to deliver brands and brand experiences to the hands of the consumer at the click of a mouse.
In the other bowl he weighs the ‘golden space’ that serves as a sometimes necessary antidote to the suffocating closeness in which brand allure will grow weak.
Some days he will work from the latter to restore the magic that familiarity extracts.
On other days he will work with the former to lay out new paths that bring renewed presence and intimacy to the brand in his charge.
He works without fuss, mostly intuitively.
When prompted he will tell you that branding has become the art of continually adjusting the distance between the consumer and the brand.
He will say his responsibility is to keep the flame of interest alive in the relationship.
The Dreamer
Some may know him from their own brand voyage as “the innovator,” but in truth, his faculty of mind is more like that of a dreamer.
He allows himself to drift fearlessly into unexplored patterns and paradigms, completely at home with paradox.
He refuses logic, he admits no dissonance between opposing truths.
On a shred of paper tucked in his breast pocket, he carries the famous words of the physicist who said “the opposite of a profound truth is not its negation, but in fact, another profound truth.”
You would think that someone scanning for new worlds would spend his days at sea clinging to the top of the mast, telescope to his eye.
But he does not.
Instead, he walks the deck everyday reading the lilt of the ocean, leaning over the stern to contemplate the wake, closing his eyes to truly hear the scream of the gulls.
He will tell you that all transformational ideas lie beyond us rather than within us and that to find them is to surrender to that space without predisposition.
You will never come upon brave new ideas by looking for them, he will say, adding: “If it was that easy, all the world’s progress would have come from people sitting on flagpoles with binoculars.”
The Mapmaker
She is the creative mind who was once left standing on the pier watching the ship sail, patiently waiting for its return to ply her craft.
But no more.
In this age, she is a vital member of the crew and a profound influence on the success of the voyage.
She translates the shifting currents and darting forms beneath the ship to dazzling shapes and colours, she fuses words and images to illuminate the journey in unexpected, often liberating ways.
She carries her journal everywhere, ceaselessly taking notes.
She scribbles tiny details of the expedition and its parade of passengers,
dissecting micro-moments that might tear down a fence of bordered thinking, something that might trip the switch of the habitual and instead, light up the coast of an explored idea.
When the time comes to steer the ship into new waters, she is usually the one who knows how to avoid the shallows, the one to first identify the
depths where the treasures are buried.
She makes the map.
She knows where to place the X.
These are the indispensable sailors, crucial to every brand’s voyage in this age we find ourselves. For those of you who already have these salty dogs aboard, sail on. For those still in harbour loading their ship, you should not leave port without them.
Ian Mirlin is a writer/thinker and founder of Zero Gravity Thinking.
