BLOG 24 You are a Brand

Blog 24:    27^th  Jan. 2010

You Are a Brand

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

One of the major marketing tenets is the significance and strategy of branding. The experts inform us that successful branding holds the key to marketability and sales. Two companies whose branding strategies are often cited as models are Virgin and Apple. Both are hugely successful companies. Virgin is noted for its adventurousness and flair, and Apple is associated with creative elegance and remarkable techno-prophecy.

Their success goes well beyond the efficacy of their products.  It goes to the core of our belief systems – our belief in these companies.  Branding launches beliefs. Once you have flown with Virgin you are hooked by youthfulness, jocular approach, cabin lighting effects and the Virgin touch in all on-board services.  Once you experienced the Apple Mac or i-pod, it is difficult to revert back to an ‘ordinary’ PC or a renegade MP3 player. Our belief in their legend is supreme. So when Apple notifies the market that a Mac Tablet is about to be launched, even though the concept is not new, the compelling belief that Mac does it right immediately guarantees a successful market launch.

Choose a leader whose ‘branding’ excites you and encourages you to place your beliefs in him or her. Not too many, right?  Obama exuded charisma that launched the Obama brand. Yet it has largely dissipated in the tatters of false hope and broken promises. The rhetoric outstripped real-politik and the brand tarnished in the dust-heap of economic woes and geo-political failures. Even a Nobel prize couldn’t resuscitate the brand. The Obama brand has lost its sparkle.  

Marxism, communism, and socialism were also once touted as political brands of their future. But the after-shocks of their human failures left belief in their brand in the coarse hearts of a few hardened radical leftists. The Palestinian brand of an oppressed and humiliated nation became undressed and naked through competitive self-aggrandizement, adoption of Goebbels’s lies strategy, and a culture of blackmail-induced European market countries handouts.

So what leadership brand inspires you? What political, philosophical, psychological , or religious brand compares to Apple and Virgin? Is that cynicism I espy in your eyes?

The answer: You have to become the brand.  You have the capacity for honesty, decency, consistency, and personal leadership.  You can overcome temptation and peer group pressure.  You can express your giftedness and abilities. You are a brand. You are Apple.  You are Virgin. But it takes an act of courage to believe in your own brand to the point that you actually live it.

Tomorrow morning, wake up with a sense of mission.  Allow the world to benefit and be inspired by your uniqueness, the image of your higher self. Your brand is much more powerful than Apple or Virgin. But for the brand to have reach you have to live a true version of you! Allow others to believe in you by living your brand – openly, courageously, and truly.

 

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org