Why do we need a paradigm shift in branding?
Over the last decade we have all witnessed a unique paradox—a word becoming one of the most quoted marketing terms in history—yet still having no definite meaning what this word should represent. This word is ‘BRAND’. You may say—marketers are selling this ‘cool stuff’ pretty well, right? As a result, everyone is crazy about brands.
When it comes to the definition of ‘a brand’, it is a different story. Ask 10 marketers about their opinion on ‘brand’ and you’ll get at least 11 different answers. How could you manufacture a product of skyrocketing demand if your production team cannot agree on what you really do?
It looks like every branding agency, ad agency or design studio in the world is proudly making up their own ‘BRAND’ definition. Just imagine how ‘creative’ all their definitions are... And they truly believe that the only one is right—theirs of course.
The question we should ask is simple—yet crucial—considering importance of brands on the global scale: Why people who believe they can create and sell ‘BRANDS’ do not even bother to look inside and explore what a brand is?
There is no doubt that a number of people working in the creative industry (e.g. marketing, design, advertising, communications etc.) are going to grow in the future. Does it mean that ‘a brand’ definitions are going to hit record high?
What we need is to look at a brand from completely different perspective. We need a paradigm shift to redefine what a brand really is – to unify our views and focus our attention on what is critical to explore and understand the origin of brands.
When Isaac Newton first introduced his laws of motion in 1687 to explain classical mechanics from the physics perspective, he established ‘a mechanical view’ of the world he lived in.
It took almost 250 years till Albert Einstein took in 1905 a chance to break free human mind from that mechanical ‘straitjacket’ by presenting his ‘The Special Theory of Relativity’. It was a paradigm shift the physics needed to see and understand better the fundamental laws guiding our universe.
This is the reason why we need a paradigm shift in branding. If we want to understand the fundamental laws that govern everything related or connected with brands, we must think out of the box. As the first step to achieve that we should postulate the basic principles what brands are and why they exist.
We are ready to make this important step alone. In the upcoming months we are going to reveal our radical definition of a brand. In fact, we may have already started. Because a brand is not what you think it is.
By Dr. Jan Knap on July 1st, 2018
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