Filed Under: 21st Century Branding, Beliefs-Based Branding, Intrinsic Branding
By Emily Soccorsy
As a business owner and the chief spiritual officer of your brand, I dare you to reflect on this question:
How is your brand contributing to your community, your industry or the world?
It’s a vital question that reveals just how alive, vibrant, and meaningful your brand is.
It’s a question that needs addressing before we delve into the other, more tactical, obvious parts of the brand, like the website, content game plan, and social presence.
A brand that is clear on its impact and its contributions will be much better able to navigate the tactical concerns.
If you are a leader who carefully thinks about impact, about legacy, about the future, this question may stop you in your tracks.
If it does and it feels intimidating, please note, the question is about contribution.
It’s not about being the best, or taking over the world, or crushing what others may be contributing. It’s about giving something.
It’s about sharing something you believe others should know.
It’s additive. And collaborative.
We don’t think about contribution enough.
We tend to think in terms of win or lose, through the lens of good versus bad, victors and losers. We crush ourselves trying not just to contribute, but be the best. And in doing so, we miss all kinds of opportunities to give, and to differentiate ourselves.
How many times have I been talking to a prospective client who says their mission is to “be the go-to organization” or “be the best such-and-such business” in their space.
While the sentiment is admirable, its grandiose nature actually makes it unremarkable and flat.
A broad and non-specific idea is not as personal, invitational, and motivational as something like, “Our mission is to contribute to a new way of thinking about serving clients in xyz space.” Or, as a recent client uncovered, “our mission is to unleash the greatness of the women of this profession.”
I played basketball growing up and into high school.
Teams with incredible starting lineups still need to have specific role players to be well-rounded competitors.
Coaches know that players who come in for just a few minutes can make a significant contribution to the game.
It might be a few minutes, a few points, a turnover, a frustrating full-court press. Or it might be something less tangible, like a burst of buoyant energy when a team’s fighting spirit is lagging.
These role players know their aim: to make a positive contribution for the opportunities and time you’re given.
In the business world, even ventures that ultimately crumble can contribute something positive, direction-changing, or significant to a space.
In terms of brand, contribution can come in a variety of ways.
A brand’s mission can make a contribution. A brand’s message itself can make a contribution, provided it’s as S.U.E. (Simple, Unexpected, Emotional) as it can be.
A brand’s positioning, or what we call the category can make a big contribution. A category is the larger conversation you want to name, lead and ultimately, own, in the market.
Most calcified industries need the innovation of category to start new conversations about what needs to change in their space.
Our mission is to inspire leaders to go inward.
Our message is that brand is how other people experience your soul.
Our category is intrinsic branding.
(I share this because we practice what we teach.)
Since we coined the term intrinsic branding more than seven years ago during a team retreat in Austin, we have been advancing that way of practicing branding.
We teach that branding is really from the inside out. That all brands are manifestations of a set of beliefs, mission, standards that emanate from a shared set of values. Those set of values begin at the soul level.
Creating a business around them is a way of sharing them with the world.
We believe uncovering that root system is not a box-check, done hastily, dumped into the company manual, then put in a file and forgotten about.
It should be the center of operations, the red thread that runs through every aspect of the business.
It should be shared repeatedly, written about, discussed openly. It should be challenged and referenced. It ought to work as a guide for business decisions, as a barometer for who to work with and what to work for. It ought to serve as a consistent reference for how you choose to share your message with your audience.
Contributing is an act of generosity.
Yes, you need to run a profitable business that takes good care of the people you serve and the people you lead. But you also need to consider, beyond that, what you have to give.
This holiday season, take time to ponder what would be of greatest value to others around you, what idea or philosophy you have that might be able to shift the larger space in which you work.
Where you eventually end up will enhance both the brand – and the final outcome.