Synetic Brand

This passage from James Gleik’s Chaos is a reminder of one of the major challenges user experience professionals face when we speaking to the uninitiated — to those coming from a deployment-centric perspective:

To some the difficulty of communicating the new ideas and the ferocious resistance from traditional quarters showed how revolutionary the new science was. Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility. A physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Joseph Ford, started quoting Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

The expectation of those we are speaking to is that we will add to their existing process, without deeply modifying what they do. In fact, we are introducing significantly deep and disruptive methodological changes.

Further, we ask for something truly difficult, not only cognitively but also affectively: We ask them to shift their perspective and see what they do from a different angle. The more we can recognize the anxieties that accompany this kind of shift the more compassionately and effectively we can address it.

This passage gets very close to the crux of synetic brand:

When we try to examine the hermeneutical phenomenon through the model of conversation between two persons, the chief thing that these apparently so different situations — understanding a text [NOTE: or a design] and reaching an understanding in a conversation — have in common is that both are concerned with a subject matter that is placed before them. Just as each interlocutor is trying to reach agreement on some subject with his partner, so also the interpreter [ / user] is trying to understand what the text [ / design] is saying. This understanding of the subject matter must take the form of language. It is not that the understanding is subsequently put into words; rather, the way understanding occurs — whether in the case of a text or a dialogue with another person who raises an issue with us — is the coming-into-language of the thing itself. Thus we will first consider the structure of dialogue proper, in order to specify the character of that other form of dialogue that is the understanding of texts. Whereas up to now we have framed the constitutive significance of the question for the hermeneutical phenomenon in terms of conversation, we must now demonstrate the linguisticality of dialogue, which is the basis of the question, as an element of hermeneutics.

Our first point is that the language in which something comes to speak is not a possession at the disposal of one or the other of the interlocutors. Every conversation presupposes a common language, or better, creates a common language. Something is placed in the center, as the Greeks say, which the partners in dialogue both share, and concerning which they can exchange ideas with one another. Hence reaching an understanding on the subject matter of a conversation necessarily means that a common language must first be worked out in the conversation. This is not an external matter of simply adjusting our tools; nor is it even right to say that the partners adapt themselves to one another but, rather, in a successful conversation they both come under the influence of the truth of the object and are thus bound to one another in a new community. To reach an understanding [synesis] in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were.

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Synetic branding is neither organization-centric, nor is it user-centric.

Synetic branding is relationship-centric, which means all parties, through dialogue, come to a mutually transformative  shared understanding.

Synetic branding is the method of generating dialogue between an organization and those who participate in the organization (stakeholders). “To reach [synesis] in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were.”

Synetic branding sees brand neither as the possession of an organization, nor as the image of the organization in the minds of customers, etc. Neither is exactly wrong, but neither is right enough.

Synetic branding is participatory, which means that brand is a whole that exceeds each of its parts, which both influences and is influenced by its parts. A participant in a synetic brand, whether he participates as an executive, an employee, a shareholder, a partner or a customer, sees by way of the brand’s vision, but to some degree changes the brand’s vision through his participation. The object of this vision is the field with which an organization concerns itself and its offerings within that field, but the vision extends far beyond the object, and influences aesthetic (thus brand identity systems) and how related offerings are perceived (thus brand equity).

Synetic branding means taking responsibility for cultivating mutual understanding among all who participate and recognizing that the essence of a brand is precisely the mutuality of the understanding. Everything, including all the things people commonly mistake for brand itself, such as the image of the company in the minds of whoever), follows from this. Failure to recognize this fact is what has made so many companies into decorated commodity clones. They see everything the same way, manage themselves the same way, follow tweaked and relabeled versions of identical processes, make the same kinds of trade-offs and basically aim for the same ideal as everyone else.

Synetic brand uses large-scale dialogue between an organization’s participants to discover new unifying perspectives on an organization’s offerings that otherwise would remain invisible to everyone.

These perspectives open new questions and new possibilities in the organization’s field of concern. This is the foundation of meaningful innovation and sustainable competitive advantage.

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.

An organization’s brand vision is a perspective that reveals the organization, its approach to its business, and its offerings as superior. This is the primary purpose of brand — to bring those involved with the brand (aka “stakeholders”) to see the organization and its offerings in the best light.

However, a brand perspective affects more than just the specific objects brand seeks to reveal — it organizes many incidental things around the view, and these things also indicate the perspective.

However, just as where one stands in a room organizes the entire room within a particular perspective, not only the object of one’s attention to (say, a couch one is walking around to inspect it from all angles), the perspective of the brand changes the appearance of the brand’s context. The brand perspective “tilts its context”.

The brand perspective then is given reinforcing coherence by including all possible cues of where one stands when one sees by the brand perspective — that common ground from which one sees when one really understands what the organization stands for. They intuitively indicate where to stand, or better, indicate in a very immediate way that you stand on common ground with the brand in the way stars indicate to navigators where they’ve sailed their ships.

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Brand is primarily a perspective one wishes to share. The word for the understanding one gains through seeing by a shared perspective is synesis. Synesis is the Greek word for understanding (literally “together”, both in the sense of “seeing together with…” as well as “seeing as together”) in perspectival unity. The goal of synetic branding is to bring customers to see the world from the point of view of the brand, ordered within the brand perspective.

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The fundamental elements of a brand model are:

1. The brand perspective: From where it stands in regard to its purpose, how does the organization see what it is and does?
2. The brand position: From where it stands in the competitive landscape, how does the organization see its competition? (This is relative positioning: there is no single competitive landscape, only the landscape viewed from competing synetic points.)
3. The brand attributes: From where the organization stands, what seems ideal? What ethically, aesthetically, symbolically resonates when one stands here?