Living brands

Living brands are not invented. A living brand cannot be assembled like a machine.

Living brands are discovered and cultivated.

It is like discovering the enthusiasms and talents of a child and cultivating them toward an integrated adult personality.

It is like gathering plants, arranging them in a garden where they can flourish individually and create a pleasing effect as a whole, then caring for them.

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Living brand means…

…discovering inherent unity within a diverse organization — perhaps latent, but perhaps pervasive to the point of invisibility…

…then identifying and articulating the virtues and values that constitute this already-existent unity as its living parts, as the organs of the organization, as its anatomy…

…then conversing with the participants of the organization — within it and outside it — to discover the meaning and value of this unity and its anatomy…

…then cultivating that unity in whole and part (holistically) toward ever-increasing value to all participants, toward the organization’s greatest health…

…and finally, intentionally manifesting the organization’s virtues in the qualities of its interactions and its service…

…and intentionally reflecting the organization’s values in the qualities of its self-presentation and its products.

At first, the brand is a discipline, something that must be practiced relentlessly despite initial unnaturalness. Gradually, stilted awkwardness melts into gracefulness. Eventually brand becomes second nature. Then brand is simply the organization being most faithful to itself, to its purpose and to those it serves.

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Branding is like practicing the piano, working on one’s golf swing, learning the counts and steps of a dance, learning to think logically, learning to obey the law of the land.

The goal of these activities is to become second nature.

We are trying to come to the point were we simply are in the music, in the game, in the dance, in the thought, in the life of the culture . The activity does itself through us, but paradoxically, somehow, this is when we are most ourselves.

This second nature we acquire is the fulfillment of the discipline, and that fulfillment is intrinsically good. There is no external, rational justification for them, because justification means tracing a thing back to some intrinsic goodness.

To put it as simply as possible: Disciplined practice is justified through fulfillment in second nature.

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We love brands because they are the radiance of a fulfilled organization which simply does what it is, and lives through natural individual participation.