Anais Nin was a Cuban-French author who became famous for her published journals. Years before branding emerged as a business topic, Ms. Nin offered this insight:

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

In creating an engaging brand, the process of branding must reveal things as they are, rather than as how a brand’s owner sees them. For many organizations and their CEOs, this concept remains an often difficult, counterintuitive, and yet essential idea to grasp.

As demonstrated in the following links, the market is littered with examples of otherwise certified smart people who failed in this understanding.

Before the emergence of the contemporary discipline of branding, in addition to Ms. Nin there were some who intuitively understood this basic principle, each ahead of their time.

[More posts about Brand Understanding | More posts about Brand Research | More posts about Anais Nin | More posts about Laws of Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about Brand Research]

François-Marie Arouet was a French Enlightenment writer known for his wit and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial.

Arouet, more commonly known by his pen name Voltaire, he the author of Candide, ou l’Optimisme, or Candide: Or, The Optimist, also offered us the following, which today applies to the discipline of branding:

“The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.”

Too often organizations rush to tell consumers everything about themselves. Think of the vast majority of tech companies that rush to share the story of the science behind their technology. Zzzzzzzzzzz. It’s the equivalent of demanding that the consumer pay to hear a brand story—pay, literally, by paying attention with their time and mental effort, neither of which a consumer is likely to invest when a brand offers a book about itself. For organizations wanting to tell everything about themselves, it’s arrogant, narcissistic and yes, boring.

Instead, consumers will readily stop and invest their time and mental effort to hear a simple thought, elegantly expressed in a new and entertaining way.

We discuss the topic of simplicity as it relates to effective branding often in these pages. Voltaire helps make the point.

But then Voltaire, a font of memorable quotes, also is credited with this:

“It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”

What does virginity have to do with branding? With an assist from François-Marie Arouet, we leave that to you.

[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Simplicity | More posts about Voltaire | More posts about Laws of Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Brand Virgin | More blogs about Brand Simplicity]

The power of emotion behind decision-making comes from what might seem a surprising source.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a young aristocratic French lawyer, traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its penal system. His visit resulted in the classic De la démocratie en Amérique, also known as Democracy in America, a 19th century masterpiece of United States cultural and political analysis. de Touqueville offers this insight of the power of highly charged imprints upon the human mind, and how they guide us throughout life:

[To understand a man] we must watch the infant in his mother’s arms; we must see the first images which the external world casts upon the…mirror of his mind, the first occurrences which he witnesses; we must hear the first words that awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest efforts—if we could understand the prejudices, the habits and the passions which will rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child.

Some 170 years ago, de Tocqueville had it right. To understand any audience and identify the basis upon which decisions among competing choices are made, good brand research uncovers what the individual does not know they know, by reaching into the subconscious and uncovering what was experienced - imprinted - at an early age.

It is these imprints — the experiences of early childhood — that form the context through which an individual will view the world throughout their life and, as it relates to an understanding of brand effectiveness, react to communications seeking to influence them. These subconscious imprints, or mental codes, each communicate relevance, assurance, childhood joy, trust, and an expectation. The stronger the emotion associated with the experience, the stronger the imprint. Think of it this way, in an example from The Culture Code:

[A] child [is] told by his parents to avoid a hot pan on a stove. This concept is abstract to the child until he reaches out, touches the pan, and it burns him. In this intensely emotional moment of pain, the child learns what “hot” and “burn” means and is very unlikely ever to forget it.

Imprints are the subconscious memories we file away, forgetting them until they are recalled at some later date if the appropriate emotional trigger is experienced.

Before the importance of research into the effects of human emotion upon brand development was understood, de Tocqueville prophetically pointed the way to success. He could foresee the power of imprints, those first impressions, in most any effort to own the conversation within any industry.

Surfacing these imprints, this context, and understanding each as they relate to the relevance and reputation of your organization or product or city, is what leads to the story behind a brand that becomes unforgettable, and one taking its place alongside others ingrained in popular culture.

[More posts about Brand Relevance | More posts about Brand Research | More posts about Emotional Branding | More posts about Alexis de Tocqueville | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Democracy In America | More blogs about Brand Research]

Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, the visionary who with her first husband extended the Winnie The Pooh characters and brand into a merchandising machine, passed away yesterday.

After licensing the merchandise rights to The Walt Disney Company in 1961 in exchange for royalties, Pooh products grew to generate over $1 billion in annual sales.

An interesting life, as captured in this remembrance from the Los Angeles Times:

Her first husband, Stephen Slesinger, was among the first to see Pooh’s financial potential. A literary agent, Slesinger in 1930 secured the rights to sell Pooh merchandise in the United States and Canada from A.A. Milne, author of the Pooh books.

When Slesinger died in 1953, Lasswell was left with the rights and a 1-year-old daughter to support.

“I thought, ‘Now what do I do?’ But it was right there for me,” Lasswell told The Times in 2002. “I decided to promote Pooh.”

…[She] paid homage to the character that’s “really been my whole life,” Lasswell told Fortune magazine in 2003, by driving a Cadillac with a license plate that said “POOH 1.”

[More posts about Brand Extension | More posts about Brand Merchandising | More posts about Winnie The Pooh | More posts about Walt Disney | More posts about Brand Success | More posts about Retail Branding | More posts about Consumer Goods Branding | More posts about Shirley Slesinger Lasswell | More blogs about Brand Merchandising]

…Says the headline in this celebration of the 10th birthday of the blogosphere, from The Wall Street Journal, confirming what many recognize: Blogs have quickly evolved as a communications channel, of importance to most any organization brand. Whether companies fully grasp this culture shift is a topic for another column, or share your comment below.

From the Journal:

The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one’s way through the morning’s newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 — and a fair few folk over that age — now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today’s bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.

We are approaching a decade since the first blogger — regarded by many to be Jorn Barger — began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”

The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And before them there were “proto-blogs,” embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form.

As part of The Journal’s coverage, this slideshow of blog design.

And this advice for what makes an effective blog, from Elizabeth Spiers, founding editor of Gawker, as quoted in the Journal:

They were topically focused, often in niche areas. They published regularly and frequently, typically during office hours and several times a day. They published content that was original or difficult to find, from breaking news to proprietary photographs to obscure links that readers are unlikely to find on their own. They were usually well-written, which has its own intrinsic appeal for anyone who prefers to enjoy what they’re reading. And lastly, they engaged their readership by soliciting feedback and responding to it, in the form of asking for tips, allowing comments or otherwise demonstrating some level of interest in their audience’s preferences.

Good advice.

[More posts about Blog History | More posts about Blog Strategy | More posts about Blog Design | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Communication Trends | More posts about Pop Culture | More blogs about Blog Strategy]

In the 1930s, Harvard linguist George Kingsley Zipf found that “the” — the most-used English word — occurred about twice as often as “of” (second place), about three times as often as “and” (third) and so on.

All well and good, but how does Zipf’s Law apply to the discipline of branding? A recent study in Australia illustrates the power of branding in developing consumer preference and market share. From the New York Times:

Jan H. Hofmeyr, an expert on consumer behavior at Synovate…said he recently discovered that Zipf’s law also applied to the brand preferences of consumers and their spending habits.

“Marketers have always known it’s better to be No. 1 than No. 2, but now you can attach a revenue consequence to that,” Mr. Hofmeyr said.

Before being adopted by Synovate, Mr. Hofmeyr’s ideas were tested in Australia on two product categories: toilet paper and instant coffee. Consumers were asked to identify the brands they used and to rank them in order of preference.

According to his model, consumers who used four brands of toilet paper might have been expected to spend about 53 percent of their toilet paper budget on the top choice, 27 percent on the second brand, 13 percent on the third and 7 percent on the fourth.

In the Australian test case, consumers actually spent 50 percent on the top choice, 33 percent on the second, 9 percent on the third and 8 percent on the fourth. Averaged over hundreds of consumers, Mr. Hofmeyr said, the study showed an unusually high correlation between stated preferences and actual purchase decisions.

Zipf’s law…demonstrates the relative benefits of moving up in the rankings, Mr. Hofmeyr said. A product that leaps from second to first in a category can…affect a company’s bottom line, he said, while the advantage of moving up to, say, No. 5 from No. 6 is much smaller.

“With this approach, the moment you determine a brand’s ranking, you can predict the market share,” he said.

A real world understanding of Zipf’s Law is found in the Number One Number Two strategy initiated by Jack Welch early in his tenure as CEO of GE. If a GE business wasn’t first or second in its markets worldwide, or couldn’t be made so, it would be sold.

And how might any brand become number one or number two in its industry? By use of an own the conversation® strategy.

[More posts about Brand Equity | More posts about Laws of Branding | More posts about Zipf’s Law | More posts about George Kingsley Zipf | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Own The Conversation® Strategy | More posts about Brand Management | More posts about Jack Welch | More posts about GE | More blogs about Brand Equity]

Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian archetype of the Renaissance Man, is described as infinitely curious and equally inventive.

One of the greatest painters and artists of all time, he of the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man, also offers us the following, today of application to any brand:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

The topic of simplicity appears often throughout these pages.

Differentiating a brand through simplicity is key to engaging any audience one seeks to influence. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci”, meaning “Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci”, intuitively knew this, centuries before branding became a topic of discussion.

As demonstrated throughout his life, Leonardo was ahead of everyone else.

[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Simplicity | More posts about Leonardo da Vinci | More posts about Laws of Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about Brand Simplicity]

Coco Chanel, reflecting upon the early days in building her business, of what would eventually become the House of Chanel:

“People laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success: I didn’t look like anyone.”

Not looking, sounding, thinking like the competition is the key behind most any successful brand. Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel intuitively knew this, long before branding became a topic of discussion.

As usual, and as she demonstrated throughout her life, Ms. Chanel was ahead of everyone else.

[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Coco Chanel | More posts about Chanel | More posts about Chanel Brand Image | More posts about Apparel Branding | More posts about Retail Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about Brand Differentiation]

This verse from the Robert Burns poem, To A Louse, describes the value of qualitative brand research:

O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!

Step out from behind your desk, conference table, or workstation, and see yourself, your product, your organization, as others see you. Rather than speculate in a conference room, get out to watch and listen at how your brand and lifestyles converge. It’s where true insight begins for brands wishing to move beyond the banal.