When someone challenges that an idea is “off-brand”... or argues that an idea is Unfalteringly Right because it feels so “on-brand”... I’d respectfully suggest that it’s worth taking a pause to really consider the genuine “iron-cladness” of either perspective.
Here’s why.
Who’s to say what “The Brand” is actually all about? For starters, you’ve got the subjective perception card to play (check out archive: Brands: Thorny, gnarly, ever-so-twisty). All brands live in the minds of others, and that’s as foreign as a place can be, with no one landscape looking much the same.
But perhaps what’s even more interesting is the idea that brands are wildly subjective and idiosyncratic personalities in their own right, and that campaigns can be developed that pursue and amplify the many gloriously contradictory dimensions upon which a brand’s personality is built.
It’s a thought. Stay with me here; at least for a little of the way.
Brands are not only organic, but they’re permanently work-in-progress personalities, spilling over with quirks, anomalies, contradictions, drivers and all.
We typically reject characters in books and movies that are painfully two-dimensional. We flinch at their lack of depth or imagination. I think the same is true of brands.
Who’s going to fall in love with a poorly drawn 2-dimensional brand? Surely we want our brands to run a whole lot deeper than that, to keep us interested, keen, still guessing after however long it’s been?
One favoured approach to personality profiling, Myers Briggs Type Indicator is based on Jung, who was keen on the idea that people are all composites of inherent contradiction. Our scales are never static. We are at differing times and to differing degrees Lover & Cage Fighter, Poet & Artisan, Introvert & Extrovert, Jekyll & Hyde, Batman & Bruce Wayne... ok, you get the idea.
So by extension of the Duality of Man, consider the Duality of Brand, that every brand, if you like, has a Dark Knight that compliments its charming billionaire alter ego.
The Duality of (Bat) Man
A couple of years back, Faris, a friend of mine posted the notion of brand’s having a Dark Side (http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2007/01/the_dark_side_o.html), a brooding Yin to complete the white and fluffy Yang that brands more customarily project to the outside world. Then, as now, I love this thought and the message behind it, that marketeers should not be afraid to explore their brand’s dark side.
I think today that call to explore is even less of an appeal, and more of an imperative. “Brand stretch” is more elastic than most folk think, more like superhero spandex.
I’m not suggesting being kamikaze or cavalier with pushing where a brand can go and what it can do, but I am saying there’s scope to go “a little schizoid”, so long as it’s, y’know, “in a good way”, a crusading way – because brands need to stimulate and surprise their audiences, to misdirect and challenge pre-conceived expectations. Otherwise, brands, like people, just go stale.
Brands can never afford to be bores, but they really should consider their inner Batman.
SP.
Reference:
Full Metal Jacket – Kubrick – "The Jungian thing":
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