Beyond authenticity

If business were like baseball, credibility would be first base, authenticity second base and good branding third-base.  But how to hit a home run? According to Patrick Hanlon, author of Primal Branding, you score big when your customers open their hearts to you so that your product or service becomes a meaningful part of the culture your clients move in.

Reading Primal Branding was the experience that gave me the courage I needed to trust my instincts about authenticity. The implications for job boards and other Internet businesses are significant.  Just have a look at the number of anonymous job boards in the top 100 niches.  This is a situation that can only hold in a low competition environment with little transparency.

Here is an executive summary I wrote to try to inspire thinking at LatPro about our branding efforts:

Primal Branding

Primal Branding, by Patrick Hanlon, claims that when products or services have seven "pieces of code" they become a meaningful part of our culture. The seven pieces of code are the creation story, the creed, the icons, therituals, the pagans (or nonbelievers), the sacred words, and the leader.

Creation Story. According to Hanlon, a creation story is not a strategy. It provides context, and meaning. Think of Hewlett and Packard working in their garage, or Henry Ford producing the very first assembly line automobiles. It's the crucial first step in providing answers to why people should care about you, or your product or service.  The creation story not only answers who you are and where you come from, but helps setup the further pieces ofprimal code.  Every company was started somewhere, some how, by someone.Like telling a good tale, the opportunity is how to make it interesting.

The creed is what defines a company. Think of Starbuck's seeking to be "the third place" (the other two being home and office), or Barnes & Noble saying "We do important work." Sometimes the creed can also be a company's slogan: i.e., Just Do It...or Think Different.  The creed should answer the question, Why do we belong in people's lives? Why do we come to work in the morning?  Why should people care?  The answer might be To invent.  To discover.  To teach. To save. To discuss.  To enlighten.  What does your company celebrate?  Is it precision quality?  Break-through innovation? Best of class customer service?  Incredible performance? Economics?  The creed is a principle; it is what the company is about. It's very similar orthe same thing as Guy Kawasaki's "Mantra".

The icons may be a company's logo...or even a sound, taste, or smell. Or touch: consider the shape of the handle on all OXO tools.

The rituals are the ways in which a company makes more distinct and memorable the repeated points of contact between themselves and their guest, customers, client, or target market. For example, Wal-Mart enriches the experience of entering their stores simply by the presence of greeters. The idea is to develop rituals that make the mundane experience become exciting and reinforce the brand.

One way of discerning the rituals involved with your service is to think through how people become involved with your brand.  Draw a timeline and write down the moment when people are first introduced to your brand, then the string of ritual events that follow...

Ritual replaces chaos with order.  Rituals are active engagements that can be imbued with either positive or negative meanings.  In fact, the vitality of your brand comes with the number of positive interactions you have with your consumer.

The consequence of engineering positive rituals around your product or service while your competitors conduct business as usual can be substantial.

The Pagans. Part of saying who you are and what you stand for is also declaring who you are not and what you don't stand for. That's what "the pagans (or nonbelievers)" is all about.

For example, people who drink Starbucks aren't going to be satisfied with Folger's instant.

Who are we not?  What are we trying to avoid?  Who are we up against?  While it is easy to set yourself up against the competitors that help differentiate you outside the company, it is more difficult and painful to identify the pagans within your organization.

The sacred words are the words that people need to learn to become insiders in a company's culture. Having learned those words, people feel a real sense of belonging. They develop a bond with the brand. And that's enormously valuable. For example, people who "belong" at Starbucks understand the difference between a "tall" and a "grande." Or think about all the special word references on Seinfeld. Or the "words" kids use in instant messaging.

The leader. Finally, Hanlon writes that all successful belief systems have a person who is the catalyst, the risk taker, the visionary, the iconoclastwho set out against all odds to re-create the world according to their own sense of self, community, and opportunity.

The leader can be the founder (like Branson, or Disney, or Edison)...or a strong individual who takes their place (like Welch, or Eisner).

If you found this review interesting, you may also like to read my summary of Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind