What Brand Consultants can learn from Philosophy. #1

Be jealous of change.

It took me seven years of working in communication and several years of working as a brand consultant to realize how awesome philosophy is. It constitutes the very essence of our work — or at least: you will find all strategic brand thoughts somehow in it — so hear me out…

Positioning is all about metaphysics, a concept of philosophy dealing with the highest of all generalizations where you find the essential substance of all the research you will do in advance. Once there, you realize how everything is built on just one normal, ordinary word — like Safety, from Volvo, or Happiness from Coca Cola — that lets us perceive unity in the brand’s diverse abundance. This is where the magic starts. This one simple word serves as a stepping stone or an instrument for the creatives and strategists rather than a limit.

“But the metaphysics is nothing but an attempt to think things out clearly to their ultimate significance…” — William Durant

All good, all familiar so far. But what philosophy also teaches us is the creation of harmonious strength.”…the effective harmony of the whole.” wrote Plato — well, not exactly in that context, but we can perfectly adapt it for our purposes. For a brand it means to do things over and over again but not the same things. Rather, it is about being coherent in the brand’s actions which should always lead to the brand’s positioning (our one word) in various ways. This in turn creates excellence because as we know “…we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit…” as Will Durant wrote about Aristotle.

One aspect, which applies directly to us brand consultants but essentially to every consultant of any kind, is the need and the ability of flexible (or some call it fluid) intelligence. Plato had that concept in mind for guardians. They should not act based on dogmas but based on circumstances. This is also valid for us and our work. Every four weeks we face a new project in a new department bringing along a new challenge — without flexibility we could not do it. But more importantly, philosophers have puzzled over numerous different topics — they were/are/need/needed to be flexible. We should do that too. We should not only read papers and marketing studies but be more open to other subjects and concepts like Plato’s thoughts on the road system in cities or Spinoza’s thoughts on matter and mind. So let’s do the opposite of philosopher Francis Bacon: he ran from field to field, pouring the seed of his thought into every science. You should pour seeds of philosophy into your brand strategy. That’s philosophic branding.

“They shall be legislature and executive and court in one, even the laws shall not bind them to a dogma in the face of altered circumstances. The rule of the guardian shall be a flexible intelligence unbounded by precedent.” — from the book “The Story of Philosophy” from Will Durant, Chapter: Plato

Our key takeaways so far:

• you can learn a lot from philosophy for your brand strategies
• your brand should be coherent not more of the same
• you should create a flexible intelligence, refine yourself always with various genres and perspectives

Before we come to the end of this article, let me give you another takeaway which is more like a little tool you can use for your branding process. Pretty sure there will come a situation where you ask your client or yourself “What’s special about the brand you are working on?” — the typical USP problem. And when you find yourself in a brand workshop talking about uniqueness try to write a sentence like Will Durant wrote about Francis Bacon:

“Never did a man put more life into logic,…”. Exchange man, life and logic and adapt the sentence to fit your brand and its singularity.

Never did a drink put more happiness into people’s daily life / into friendship (or so). Just a possible example for Coke. And if your brand already has manifested their values, do a little check if it would fit into this sentence.

As we know every good philosopher had something like a habit of doubt.

Happy workshop.

Thanks, Johanna Woh

Maybe there will be a #2 of my key learnings from philosophy.