Within a week in November, in Los Angeles, I met with two iconic creative people in our business of building brands. I chatted with John Hegarty at a wedding in Pacific Palisades, and a few days later I had breakfast at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica with Lee Clow.
John and I talked about a speech he was about to give to The Marketing Society in honor of their 50th Anniversary. John sent it to me, it is a wonderful talk, you need to read it. Two of his thoughts really reverberated with me. First, the idea that the language of “consumer” is old fashioned. It implies one-way, top-down driven communication. It breeds complacency and lethargy. John likes to think of “consumers” as an audience–audiences are engaged, they are entertained, they show commitment, they are involved. We as brand builders would behave differently if we took this to heart .
The second idea is the notion that all of us are in the fashion and entertainment business. No matter what we are marketing and selling. It is a mindset, so critical when your “audience” has more and more options to choose and control all communication.
My breakfast with Lee was a lovely and animated discussion about the ideas in my book, which I am getting ready to share with potential publishing partners. We talked about how conceptually simple it is to build a brand with higher ideals, with genuine meaning, a brand that impacts positively the people it serves.
Brands need a soul, an ideal, that comes from the person who conceives the brand…or from someone who rediscovers or re-imagines the brand ideal. Think Knight/Nike, Schultz/Starbucks, Smith/FedEx, Ryan/method, Jacobs/Louis Vuitton. Then the BEHAVIOR of the brand needs to emanate from the soul, the ideal. All behavior. Look at what happened when Nike moved from a shoe company to a brand that inspires potential and performance in all sports. Their behavior changed. Finally, the brand artist, or brand leader, needs to hold him/herself and everyone accountable to that brand ideal. That is what the famous Schultz Starbucks letter was all about. That is why Tony Hsieh wrote that amazing letter to his employees as Amazon was acquiring Zappos.
So it is conceptually very simple to build a brand with higher ideals, which is the only way to generate longterm growth. More later on why more people and brands don’t do it!
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