Branding Research ::: TELL ME IS IT ALL JUST SPIN?

There seems to be a sudden glut of branding specialists and businesses. It's not just for businesses and corporations anymore either, individuals are now being encouraged to be their own brand: Footballers, industry experts and employees!

Eight to ten years ago it was all about the personal or company Mission Statement. Now its about the Unique Positioning Statement attached to your personal or company brand. 

There are some beautiful brands and logos around - some lovely websites and marketing pitches being bandied around. I encourage all of that I in fact love that side of branding myself its an area I have specialised in and continue to thoroughly enjoy.

But with this proliferation of BRANDING and the recent focus on its perceived importance what I find myself asking is...

Does it work?

Who uses it?

Who benefits from its implementation?

What businesses if any thrive without ever truly have engaged it?

When does it work?

What is its value?

Now no one wants to do a survey.
Usually they are time consuming and a little irritating like a pap smear or prostate examination.

BUT!

What if the results are highly relevant to you? What if they clarify some underlying questions and business/branding queries you may have? In this instance I do hope its relevant and applicable information I can share with you the will be beneficial and at least interesting to examine.

WHO

The people I need to complete the survey will be from all walks of business and 'monetising' large and small, local and global. Please I implore you to pass this invitation on.

WHAT

What am I hoping to achieve? To gather the findings and deliver clear and distinct information that can help your bottom line.

WHERE

See the survey below and if you feel compelled subscribe as I will posting the results in a blog with anonymity assured.

WHEN

Now

HOW

By asking clear and basic questions then by compiling the results and deliver them back to you here free of charge.

All I need is a little of your time and help, I am not gathering a data base this is solely to satisfy my own queries and curiosity. All information will be strictly confidential and not used for profit on my behalf or any other party.

So get on board and lets find out what really happening.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Why I Admire People Who QUIT!

I am a trier and a striver in many ways. Always trying new things and striving to make things better. I am also a sticker - I stick by people and things.

Now that all might sound good right?

Its not good.

I think its my perception of being 'good' and 'reliable' and 'strong'. Sometimes (often) it hasn't served me. I will be there smiling and dying on the inside, my clenched brushed teeth like a little shield that belies the 'I am dying in here' mental tract I am stemming from exploding into the atmosphere verbally. I suppose in the past I could be accused of manacling and muzzling myself for the greater good of others...yes that statement could be quite fair.

Recently - very recently I decided I was going to give up. Quit. Let go of, send it off into the funeral pyre of failures. Oh I tried, I truly tied and the feedback was I was actually quite good at it but inside...sad grey limp me.

Sady Me

I don't give up on things easily like I said I commit to things - morally. My friendships; I am the stayer, the stalwart, the through thick or thin pin. My head says I will make things work. I can be irritatingly determined. Taking things on I carefully consider it all, I take a task and pick it up and examine it from every angle, I play out the what ifs in my head, I am careful, deliberate, conscious.

Then there are those other types, the people I have met that appear to have done the same then enter into it and go...

'You know what...actually...no'

I how I have grown to admire these people, they are 10 foot tall in my estimation.

Previously I was like a dog with a bone, I would gnaw on things, toss the problem around, see if I could make it into something new, something rewarding, a karmic challenge, an blessing disguised as an issue.

Yesterday I said...

No its an ugly bone, I have tasted and tested it, there is no meat, no nourishment for me. I am not the happy dog chewing on that bone and I don't want to soon behave like the dog that's poorly fed unsatisfied and mean.

So I simply said...yes after anguish and much self flagellation I said no more to that bone and I gave up. Looking myself squarely in the eye...I hee hawed loudly, barked, waged every imaginable tail and...

 I said no more, I said that's not for me!

Confirming Your Reality

I have been thinking...



you gather people around you to confirm your version of reality.

Some people I know chose their family to do this with - they surround themselves with family as their vision and values are aligned with their own. Their reference points and perspective are similar enough to breed healthy relationships within those parameters.

Then there are friends and associates we may chose to mesh with and they can exist on may levels these days. Online, work colleague, someone you might follow - their career or work, what ever it may be the viewpoint they have may correspond more closely to your own than your god given associates.

Growing up in a place that doesn't offer you enough is a challenge, you can make it work, you can get past it but it takes resilience and true resourcefulness. You pull it up from your insides. You create it.

I have two children I have given birth to and it still truly astounds me that with some help I made the bones, hair, teeth, skin tissue, the gums and eyes they have. Seriously its perplexing.

Surviving a place or mindset where you cannot thrive takes a more spiritual intellectual version of that. I do believe some elements are the same, you manifest matter and hope from the aether, internal development happens despite the baron array.  Character is forged most of it unseen. 

So...

as I said,

you gather people around you to confirm your version of reality.

Or put another way is 'Show me your friends and I will show you who you are'

My friends and the people I chose to affiliate myself with are perhaps reflections of me, they are people I admire, be they flawed or not, be they popular or not, be they perceived as the norm or not.

I have few friends, I truly love my friends - and my family I might say.

My family confirms what created me.

My kind beautiful optimistic helpful divine friends, my slightly dysfunctional very human lovable friends, my serious and light hearted, my impossibly talented, funny, clever friends, my spiritual and grounded, my old and my new friends, my close and my far.

They confirm my version of reality.

My friends my family I love them all,

and I continue on...

and look for more reality to confirm.

A Comment from the incredible Architect Frank Gehry.