Brands Should Go Back to School

Earlier this week, I sat at the back of my daughter's school hall while her principal extolled the performance of the 2009 cohort of the Singapore Chinese Girls' School's secondary 4 students in the GCE 'O' level examinations.

It was a remarkable performance by the girls (the best 'O' level results in the school's storied history) ... and a memorable experience for the proud parents in attendance.

But what struck me -- apart from the collective standout achievement of this batch of confident young ladies -- was the palpable support and team spirit demonstrated by the entire school. They cheered when slides flashed the names of the girls who'd scored six A1s or more. They screamed even louder when 20 students who had faced significant challenges through the school year were named and commended. And they brought the house down when the top two girls who scored nine A1s were named. Teachers were beaming as they were mobbed and hugged by appreciative students for their year-long gifts of insight and inspiration. The whole school celebrated as one.

It got me thinking: What is it about girls that makes them work and play together better than boys? Why didn't I feel that same sense of camaraderie, that esprit de corps, when I collected my 'O' level results? (Well, besides the fact that my results were decidedly mediocre.) And -- more to the point of this blog post -- how can companies nurture this same kind of culture?

Now, why is that important? Because organizations don't act; individuals do. What organizations do, is create cultures. Culture is the organizational equivalent of a person's character. Ingrain a character, and you'll establish a pattern of action. The behaviour that is modelled becomes the behaviour that is followed.

If we accept that the primary vehicle for delivering brand identity -- especially for a service brand -- is a company's employee workforce, then the company's culture provides the framework and the propulsion for its brand image to be kept consistent and visible in the jungle out there.

Imagine the benefits: No more 'off-the-reservation' forays into dodgy sponsorships. No misinterpretation of core brand values by employees at various customer touchpoints. No more 'silo thinking'; no more secret budgets siphoning funds away from global brand initiatives. Just a single, integrated go-to-market strategy executed by teams across the region or around the world with the Power of One.

Brands go further when brand champions work together.

Creating a Lighthouse Identity

I lived and worked in Canada for a time in the early 1990s. For over six years, Vancouver was my home; and for a third of that time, I used to commute to work, an hour each way, along a coastal road to my office downtown. A lighthouse dotted a rocky outcrop along my route; and I remember wondering what it would be like to trade places with the lighthouse master for a week. After a month or so, I stopped gazing at the lighthouse as I drove past: I knew it was there, and I knew that it signalled I was only 10 minutes from home.

As we put to bed a tumultuous 2009 and gird ourselves for the year ahead, we should give a thought ourselves to polishing and projecting a Lighthouse Identity -- for the brands under our charge as well as our own personal brands. We should strive to be -- and care for -- brands with a clear sense of who they are, and what they stand for. Brands with a true north, that aren't swayed by market forces, that compel others to navigate by them because they are anchored in constancy and consistency.

Adam Morgan lays out the credo of building a lighthouse identity in his seminal book Eating The Big Fish. It's very good; read it.

2010 will usher in a sea of change. To survive and thrive, we need a firm foundation, a bedrock of values for ourselves and our brands that will stand the test of time.

Happy new year, and may your light shine as you strive to 'keep it visible'.

What Do You Stand For?

Yesterday I attended a TED talk -- the first of its kind organized by the TED community (http://www.tedxsingapore.com/) in our island nation -- and learned about aerialist Ueli Gegenschatz, expert paraglider, skydiver and base-jumper extraordinaire. The audience was treated to video footage of his jaw-dropping flights in a wingsuit: a high-tech, flying-squirrel-inspired getup that enabled him to soar as close as humanly possible to our shared dream of human flight. (To view his 12-minute TED talk including a clip of his daredevil wingsuited jump, click on http://www.ted.com/talks/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_jumping.html

In an accompanying clip of an interview with Ueli, he mentioned plans were in motion for his next record-setting endeavour. It was only when the clip ended that we were told Ueli is no longer with us. On 11th November, he had attempted a base jump off the Sunrise Tower in Zurich. A gust of wind hit him, casuign him to lose control of his jump. His parachute failed to deploy in time and he hit the ground almost at full speed, seriously injuring himself. He died in hospital two days later.

We made out worksheets into paper planes this morning; and on the count of three, 200 winged prayers launched across the SMU hall in celebration of the life of a man who dared to dream, stood for something, and pursued it with all the God-given talent he had been blessed with.

Now, some might question the wisdom of this extreme sport and say he brought his end upon himself, pushing his luck too far in pursuit of, what -- an adrenaline rush? Fame? (Certainly not fortune.) A few might quote Einstein: "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."

I think, however, that Ueli lived by the discipline of operating within boundaries he felt he could control. At 11:45 of the TED clip, he was asked if there is anything he would not attempt, and his answer was spontaneous, "Yeah, some people have crazy ideas ...!" Ueli had a finely honed sense of what he was put on this earth for -- and in his own way, he inspired countless others to find and pursue their purpose in life. As Abraham Lincoln said, "It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

How many of us are honing our personal brands with such clarity, consistency and visibility?