1) Brand at its best is essentially synesis, a shared understanding. Synesis is a Greek word which literally means “together”. This together is twofold: it is seeing something as together — as coherent — and seeing this coherence together with others. So synesis has a social and a cognitive dimension, and both are essential and inseparable. Synesis simultaneously provides a sense of social belonging and clarity. A brand intentionally conceived and cultivated in terms of synesis, is a synetic brand. The synesis of a synetic brand centers on the activities and offerings of an organization, but the effect of the synesis extends beyond its primary object. Its scope is a shared field of vision, an angle of sight.
2) Synesis is the foundation of all human relationship. (This is why when we are getting to know someone new we naturally emphasize commonalities and points of agreement.) A synetic brand is also the basis of a system of human relationships, a complex network of internal and external stakeholders. (The internal stakeholders are the members of the organization; and the external stakeholders are those who interact with the organization from the outside.). The brand should not be seen as an attribute (or set of attributes, properties, qualities or characteristics) of the organization — the brand permeates the entire relationship. Synetic branding is the activity of intentionally cultivating an organization toward the kind of behaviors and appearances conducive to fostering specific kinds of relationships among its internal and external stakeholders, and between each stakeholder and the organization as a whole.
3) Synetic brands are cultivated not manufactured. We are working with living, human relationships — not (only) intellectual or operational machinery.
4) A synetic brand is not proscriptive, but generative. More specifically, it is con-genial: it is a creative vision by which a community can work together, create together and transact together harmoniously, productively and coherently. The particular logic and sensibility of the brand pre-aligns people’s efforts, and helps things come together organically with less misunderstanding and conflict. The proscriptive systematic approach to branding (typified by corporate brand standards manuals) is an attempt to simulate the effect of organic togetherness that belongs to synesis, but its effectiveness is limited, it can never quite overcome that that tell-tale stiffness, inauthenticity and quality of contrivance (the odor of marketing), and its effect on organizational cultures is oppressive. (This is the main political barrier brand strategists encounter when restructuring a brand architecture.) Synetic brand, by contrast, is inspiring.
5) Synetic brand works at an implicit and explicit level. It is not only about emotion and instinct, nor it is only about functions, features, and concrete advantages. It is about the alignment of all considerations, so every consideration points toward a single undivided, non-ambivalent conclusion one can embrace whole-heartedly, without reservation.
6) Synetic brand reveals an organization’s offerings as superior. The organization (if it is sufficiently conscious) makes decisions about its offerings according to certain standards of excellence. If a stakeholder accepts these standards as valid, the stakeholder is likely to share the organization’s high opinion of its own offerings. Synetic brand’s purpose is to help all stakeholders see by its own standards of excellence. A synetic brand persuades without argument. It shows.
7) Positioning is relative. Competitors are not positioned on a single competitive landscape. Each competitor, if it has a brand vision, sees its competitive landscape differently. How the competitive landscape is seen by stakeholders is what is at stake in positioning: positioning is relative. A set of competitors who see the competitive landscape the same way are caught in a commodity brawl. Commodities exist in a brand void, in the customary, uncritical popular vision. Sometimes this customary way of looking at a product was in fact created by the market leader, and market’s mass-minded submission to this vision is the means by which the market leader preserves its position.
8) A stakeholder who sees according to a synetic brand vision (or brand synesis) is literally prejudiced against all other brands. It is a self-evident empirical fact that other brands do not get it. Once you accept the vision, the conclusion automatically and precognitively follows. Synetic branding can be seen as prejudice design. But the prejudices are not false prejudices, they are a legacy of correct judgments that are no longer revisited but assumed when making judgments (thus pre-judicial) and in fact have become instinctive.
9) Synetic branding rests on a foundation of understanding, gained through interviews and the full range of user research techniques. It needs to understand the current goals, needs, behaviors, attitudes and mental models of all its stakeholders, internal and external. However, unlike classic user experience, it does not seek this understanding in order to conform to it. It seeks this understanding in order to reach a shared understanding, which will likely modify the understanding of both the organization and its stakeholders. The iterative process of user research, clarification of synetic brand, and user experience design is a complex form of dialogue.
10) A synetically on-brand offering is experienced not only as a thing that is obviously good (by the criteria of the shared value standards of the synetic brand), it is also taken as an affirmation of the synetic relationship. The ideal is that of the gift. One loves an inspired gift at every level simultaneously: the receiver of the perfect gift loves the perfection of the gift itself, loves the fact that the other somehow knew the gift was perfect; loves the intention of the gift, the concern, the understanding, the sheer giving. “You know me!”: This is what a synetic brand says to everyone who participates in the brand. We all want to be known, recognized… sought. Fundamental human needs are at work here. It is decent and right and deeply satisfying to satisfy such needs. When an organization profits from it, the whole world celebrates it.
11) A synetic brand is the best truth of an organization. To be effective as truth it must be believed as truth, seen as the self-evident truth, and to be practically effective. Once you see it… there it is. If you have to maintain it as a conviction, repeat or profess it or pledge to it, or whatever, it is not a authentic. A belief that takes itself as a belief is already expired. It shouldn’t even be experienced as a belief, but as reality itself. The surest means of establishing and preserving belief in something as truth is for it to actually be true. You can’t manufacture it. You have to look for it, spot it, then exhibit it. It appears as a moment of clarity on what the organization is all about. If you stop short of this, you’ll have one more bullshit brand who stands on a reputation of passion, innovation, integrity, putting the customer first, and all that. Can we just admit for once: nobody — nobody — believes a word of it, much less cares about it: it is empty gesture, a.k.a. marketing.
12) A synetic brand manifests holistically. It lives in every touchpoint, and even among external stakeholders who recognize in their enthusiasm for a particular brand a cultural kinship that runs far deeper than love for some particular product. It manifests behaviorally, functionally, critically, philosophically, poetically… stylistically in every form a style can occur: visually, verbally, audibly, kinetically, rhythmically, environmentally… The stomping grounds of synetic branding is culture in its entirety. This is not because synetic brand is somehow like culture or analogous to culture, but because synetic branding is culture.