Transcript

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THE BUSINESS OF MEANING

Meaning matters for business; business matters for meaning.

Would people miss your brand if it disappeared tomorrow?

Discussion Paper | January 2016

Adam Johnson & Clare GoodridgePublished by The Lover & The Engineer

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Executive summaryBusiness matters for meaning; meaning matters for business.

Humans are defined by their search for meaning. It’s how we make sense of the thousands and thousands of messages that we receive every day. We decide which of the messages matter, that is, which messages are meaningful.

We resolve which messages are meaningful by having an understanding of our identity, and how everything we absorb relates to that identity. Meaning and self are connected. A strong sense of self permits meaning to be derived from the world, and meaning permits a strong self of self.

Traditional anchors for meaning were relatively static, being connected to religion, where you lived, what you did for a wage, your family upbringing. These anchors are losing their power, and the sense of self starts to form in a much more fluid world. In this world, brands can help people derive meaning and thus a sense of self.

Brands can give people a convenient and authentic shorthand for self-expression that is also deeply connected to personal goals and motivations. Brands can be more than placeholders for identity; they can also guide action. Cues from a brand can be taken and used to guide how to interpret a life consistent with that brand’s meaning and identity.

Meaningful brands help people create anchors. They can contribute to the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Meaningful brands transcend rational judgement and are desired because they create an emotional resonance.

Meaningful brands are effectively marketed, as the sense of identity that they contain for their audience makes it easy for that audience to authentically market the brand. They are also brands that people will pay a premium for, as the meaning represented by

the brand makes price far less important in decision making. And meaningful brands are valuable, with research concluding that they outperform the stock market by 133%.

Meaning is important to prevent a brand from becoming a commodity. Where brands are seen as selling commodities, customers’ purchasing decisions are transactional and competition becomes a death spiral. Brands avoid this death spiral by becoming deeply meaningful to their audience.

It is not straightforward to become meaningful. Meaning grows over time, and it is nurtured in human connection. For a brand to connect with humans, it must be deliberate and cultivate empathy and vulnerability. People need to know what a brand is, what it stands for.

There needs to be a self-apparent way in which a brand contributes to how a person forms meaning in the world, and this is uncovered by a brand thinking deeply about itself. Understanding why it exists, its values, its personality. Knowing this, a brand has what it needs to communicate a consistent and compelling sense of identity.

A clear identity means that a brand can communicate meaning for people. It can feel solid and filled with meaning, enabling people to empathise and connect with the brand. Such a brand can communicate in ways that encourage empathy, such as through stories.

Brand communications must always be consistent with the brand identity. Brands become meaningful when they are consistent in their identity and empathise with their audience. Brands become meaningful when they are humanised and given the opportunity to connect through vulnerability, empathy and emotion.

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Contents1

Introduction04Humans search for meaning

Humans are characterised by their search for meaning.

04Meaning and self

We need to become clear as people on what is meaningful.

04Anchors

In the past, meaning and self were relatively static.

05Brands as shorthand

The sense of self forms from a much more fluid world.

05How brands can be shorthand for identity

05How brands can guide action

Brands can be more than mere placeholders to express identity.

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Meaningful Brands06 Meaning and self expression

The shorthand offered by meaningful brands ultimately lets people express themselves more completely.

06Meaning matters for business because it makes your marketing more effective

A meaningful brand doesn’t need to convince people.

06A meaningful brand is a brand people will pay a premium for

People want the meaning that you create for them.

07A meaningful brand is a valuable brand

Its reservoir of meaning has value, value that can be represented in money.

07Without meaning, brands enter the death spiral of transaction

If a brand is not meaningful, then it is only selling products or services.

07Lifting above transaction

The alternative to waging an escalating war with your competitors is to become deeply meaningful to your audience.

07The Infinite Game of meaning

Create a conversation around meaning.

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Humanising Brands08A brand must be vulnerable to be meaningful

Meaning is important for brands, vitally important, but a brand cannot simply command that it be so.

08A brand must know itself

For a brand to connect with humans, people need to know what a brand is.

08Brands need to communicate in a way that empathises with people

A brand needs to have a clear, stable identity.

09Brand identity must remain central

Regardless of the way in which brands communicate with empathy, there needs to be a continued referral back to a brand’s identity.

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Discussion Topics10

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Notes11

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Chapter 1 | Introduction

IntroductionHumans are defined by their search for meaning.

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Humans search for meaningHumans are characterised by their search for meaning. It’s something that people talk about all the time, from Simon Sinek and “Start With Why” 1 to Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning 2. Humans even invented astrology to derive meaning from something as intrinsically meaningless as the movement of planets.

We continually try to make sense of the day to day events that buffet us. And as the pitch and frequency of messages increases, the need to derive meaning becomes more urgent. We receive thousands upon thousands of messages every day. Messages that coax and cajole us one way and then the other. Dreams and visions and alternate realities that all feel they could be a part of our potential self.

These messages wash over us, a vast sea that we need to somehow resolve with our sense of self 3. Ultimately, from all of the messages around us we need to understand “Does this matter?” This question goes straight to the heart of meaningfulness, because a message matters if it is meaningful.

Meaning and selfTo resolve messages with our sense of self in a way that we benefit from, we need to become clear as people on what is meaningful. To have a very intimate understanding of who we are, our identity, and how everything we absorb relates to that identity. The messages that are relevant to our identity are meaningful. The rest is meaningless noise that we unconsciously deal, but do not consciously engage in. It’s for precisely this reason that we can survive in a message rich environment; we filter out the meaningless messages and wrap ourselves closer around the meaningful ones.

Meaning is vital for humans to reinforce their sense of self. Without a sense of meaning, our self is rapidly dissolved. Indeed, a life without meaning doesn’t feel imaginable. This isn’t to say that a life needs to have a grand purpose to be lived well, but rather that we create meaningfulness around whatever life we live.

Meaning and self are mutually supporting. A strong sense of self permits meaning to be derived from the world. It readily filters out irrelevant messages and reinforces meaningful ones, it is less buffeted. Equally, meaning permits a strong sense of self. When we have a compelling, powerful sense of meaning, then our sense of self is powerfully buttressed.

Anchors In the past, meaning and self were relatively static. They were connected to things such as your religion, where you lived, what you did for a wage, your family upbringing. These are all strong anchors, but also anchors that are rapidly losing their power.

For many, a secular age dissolves religion as an anchor. The fast pace of change in working life means that people are more mobile and can expect to change profession several times in a person’s career; this dissolves secular anchors. And the family, the “building block of society”, is becoming less well defined as a unit, leading to the traditional family being dissolved as an anchor for meaning.

The extent of these changes have progressed to the point where it feels anachronistic to base one’s self in religion, or hometown, or job or even the family. A nostalgic impulse, perhaps, when under stress, but actually very restrictive in the aspirational world.

1. Simon Sinek, Start With Why How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Published 8th January 2010

“It doesn’t matter what you do, it matters Why you do it.” With a little discipline, anyone can learn to inspire. Start With Why offers an unconventional perspective that explains the reasons some leaders and organizations are more innovative, more profitable, command greater loyalties from customers and employees alike and, most importantly, are able to repeat their success over and over.” www.startwithwhy.com

2. Viktor E Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning. First published 1946

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

3. Creating Brand Meaning: How to Use Brand Vision Archetypes, Dr Peter Steidl, 2nd Edition, 2012

We are not aware of the vast majority of signals our brain processes. Neuroscience tells us our brain processes something like 11 million bits per second and only 40 of these are processed consciously while 10,999,960 are processed by our unconscious.

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Brands as shorthandIn our world of dissolving anchors, the sense of self forms from a much more fluid world. It is a world in which brands can help people derive meaning, and in turn their sense of self. A world where people start to believe in business and the meaning business can create. Brands can help people express who they are, they can give people a convenient and authentic shorthand for self-expression. Brands can become signifiers in their own right.

How brands can be shorthand for identityFor example, somebody who wants to be associated with an element of maverick 4 is comfortable in adopting the brands that express this kind of personality or archetype, brands like Harley Davidson 5.

On the surface, choosing to associate with this maverick brand seems like a convenient shorthand for self expression, but the choice is actually deeply connected to personal goals and motivations saying much more about the person’s life purpose, values and aspirations than you might expect.

Similarly, somebody who identifies with the characteristics of the artist 6 might be excited by a brand like Moleskine 7. And Harley Davidson and Moleskine can be drawn on to create a layered, blended identity that, done well, is regarded as strongly individual.

Instead of drawing upon traditional fixed anchors for identity, people can weave together their own identity using brands and the meaning they signify as shorthand, meaningful cues.

How brands can guide actionBrands can be more than mere placeholders to express identity. They can also guide and inform how people act and think, again as a form of shorthand.

For instance, rather than needing to think too hard about the aesthetic of an artist, cues can be taken from Moleskine and incorporated into a person’s life. The Moleskine style, the Moleskine belief in quality and collaboration.

This shorthand becomes internalised and reinforces a sense of identity, it gives people quick suggestions for how to act consistent with that identity.

Chapter 1 | Introduction

4. The Maverick - Those may be your rules but they aren’t mine. I will not blindly obey; I will not keep my silence. I am not your sheep, your soldier or your slave. Do not wrong me, do not underestimate me and do not insult me. I never apologise for what is right. I celebrate non-conformity. I dare you to be different

5. Harley DavidsonPurpose: We fulfil dreams of personal freedom.Mission: Customers for life... Harley Davidson values the deep emotional connection that is created with our customers through our products, services and experiences. We are fuelled by the brand loyalty and trust that our customers place in us to deliver premium quality and the promise of fulfilling lifetime ownership experience. We exemplify this commitment by embracing a culture of personal responsibility and stewardship or quality in everything we do. http://www.harley-davidson.com/content/h-d/en_AU/company.html

6. The Artist - The true purpose of creating art is to leave something behind greater than yourself. You remember Van Gogh not for who he was but for the beauty he gave the world. Art elevates us and makes us human; art is the mark of humanity on the world. You may not be here tomorrow but your art will last a thousand lifetimes.

7. MoleskineThe Moleskine notebook is, in fact, the heir and successor to the legendary notebook used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries: among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin.http://www.moleskine.com/en/moleskine-world

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Chapter 2 | Meaningful Brands

Meaningful BrandsMeaning matters for business.

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Meaning and self expressionMeaningful brands let people create solid anchors in an otherwise chaotic world of swirling messaging and exhortations. They contribute to wellbeing. Of individuals and of communities.

A meaningful brand can help people with self-esteem, self-expression and social status. The shorthand offered by meaningful brands ultimately lets people express themselves more completely. It gives people a far more nuanced way of self-expression and identity than any of the past anchors we as humans have relied on.

Once a brand becomes and remains meaningful in this way, it is very difficult to dislodge in the psyche. The great brands are meaningful brands, not necessarily because of their products or services, but because they stand for something that matters to people. They are clear in themselves, they matter.

Meaningful brands have transcended any sort of conscious, rational judgement and are desired because they create an emotional resonance.

Meaning matters for business because it makes your marketing more effectiveA meaningful brand doesn’t need to convince people of the features or benefits of its offering, but instead shows how its offering contributes to the broader meaning it is creating. The meaning that people are openly and willingly enfolding into their life. The meaning that is contributing to their sense of identity.

A meaningful brand is marketed authentically by its audience. The brand is adopted as part of the audience’s identity, and they encourage others who share their values to adopt it. A community forms around the brand, giving you astounding leverage over your marketing spend.

A meaningful brand is a brand people will pay a premium forPeople want the meaning that you create for them, the identity you let them weave into their own self identity and self expression. Price is much less a driving factor when it comes to meaning, whatever that meaning might be.

To use our previous examples, Harley Davidson motorcycles are probably not the best performing or the cheapest motorbikes around, but they experience fanatic loyalty. Similarly, it is possible to purchase better and cheaper notebooks than Moleskine, but that’s not the point. And people will donate money to an organisation like The Wilderness Society, an action that is done without any real direct return.

All of these decisions are irrational when considered from a transactional framework. They happen because of how the brand makes people feel. The identity that people can wrap around their purchase. And when that meaning is consistently reinforced by the brand’s activities, people will continue to allow the brand to hold a significant place in their lives, trusting in and believing in what the brand stands for and its reason to exist.

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Chapter 2 | Meaningful Brands

8. Meaningful Brands® is Havas Media Group’s index that measures the potential business benefits gained by a brand when it is seen to improve our wellbeing and quality of life. http://www.meaningful-brands.com/

9. Finite and infinite Games, James P. Carse published January 2013.

“There are at least two kinds of games,” states James P. Carse as he begins this extraordinary book. “One could be called finite; the other infinite.” Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, which is when they end. But infinite games are more mysterious. Their object is not winning, but ensuring the continuation of play. The rules may change, the boundaries may change, even the participants may change—as long as the game is never allowed to come to an end.

http://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse/dp/1476731713

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A meaningful brand is a valuable brandA brand’s reservoir of meaning has value, value that can be represented in money. It is more profitable, has a higher stock market valuation, will command a substantial goodwill if sold.

Havas Media 8 research concludes that meaningful brands outperform the stock market by 133%, a significant financial dividend.

Without meaning, brands enter the death spiral of transactionIf a brand is not meaningful, then it is only selling products or services. It is selling a commodity, and people’s purchasing decisions will be transactional. This is a world of ever increasing transactional competition, a daily tussle that ultimately becomes a death spiral.

A death spiral that sees companies lock themselves together in a discounting war. It’s the not-for-profits that keep ramping up the guilt in their fundraising campaigns. The start-ups that promise an incremental improvement to existing services, the election campaigns built on fear and cynical over-promising. It is all debased, degrading and debilitating to those who participate. And it destroys value.

Lifting above transactionThe alternative to waging an escalating war with your competitors is to become deeply meaningful to your audience.

It is through creating meaning that business can escape the trenches of transactional warfare. It is meaning that lets companies sell, not-for-profits persuade, start-ups grow and governments be respected. It is meaning that lets internal culture flourish because

People know exactly what the business exists to achieve. The deeper meaning that they contribute to through their day to day activities.

The Infinite Game of meaningRather than permitting a transactional conversation, create a conversation around meaning. Rather than being a commodity, become a reservoir of meaning. Rather than playing a finite game, play the infinite game that James P. Carse describes in Finite and Infinite Games 9.

It’s an alternative that is a longer game. It’s a game that requires integrity and an acceptance that you cannot be everything to everyone. A game played to invest in the future rather than cash in on the present. A game that requires clear thought and deliberate action over a long period of time. Principled action. Persistent thought.

It’s a game that is played because you want your business to not just survive, but thrive, and to thrive for a very long time. By creating your brand as a reservoir for meaning, you can be sure that people will keep coming back to you. Your brand will be front of mind when people want to buy products and services because part of their identity comes from your brand.

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Chapter 3 | Humanising Brands

Humanising BrandsMeaningful brands are human brands.

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A brand must be vulnerable to be meaningfulMeaning is important for brands, vitally important, but a brand cannot simply command that it be so. Meaning forms, it unfolds. It is not imprinted upon the universe by decree, not demanded. And so a brand needs to develop meaning over time, to grow it from a seed, to let it naturally evolve into something around which people can wrap their life and their self identity. That seed is planted within and nurtured by, connection with humans. And for a human to connect with a brand in a similar way to how humans connect with each other, a brand needs to overcome the obvious difficulty of being inhuman and intangible. Unlike a human, it is difficult to judge a brand’s intentions and so to empathise with it.

A brand must be deliberate in creating human connection. It must cultivate empathy, vulnerability, the ability to step into the shoes of another. Organisations are not designed to do this. Instead, an organisation is designed to be self-centred, framing the world around what serves its interests. It needs a big, deep breath for a brand to decide it is going to be vulnerable.

A brand must know itselfFor a brand to connect with humans, people need to know what a brand is, what it stands for. Its identity.

There needs to be some sort of self-apparent way in which the brand can contribute to how a person forms meaning in the world. A brand must embark on a journey of self-discovery to know itself. This is thinking deeply about why the brand exists, what the greater purpose is that it serves to achieve. This reason to exist is central, unchanging, and should be

almost impossible to achieve. It should be an aspiration that excites everybody around it. The journey of a brand’s self discovery is also thinking about the values that the brand espouses. These values will be the themes that the brand comes back to again and again in its communications. They should be interesting, specific, the sorts of values that are vibrant and full of life.

Finally, a brand needs to understand its personality. Archetypes10 are useful tools here, as they let a brand tap into universal and innate human understandings of personality. They make the brand feel human. Knowing a brand’s archetype mix enables the brand to communicate in a way that is consistent, reliable, relatable.

The purpose and the values of a brand need to explicit if they are to form the seed from which the brand can become meaningful. The personality needs to be clearly demonstrated. And then, once a brand knows itself, it can communicate in a way that makes the brand relatable to people.

Brands need to communicate in a way that empathises with peopleA brand needs to have a clear, stable identity, as well as the ability to step into the shoes of the people it seeks to connect with. To know what its audience needs and then speak to those needs. To become meaningful to people, to let people feel that the brand is a part of their own identity. To be something that feels both solid and filled with meaning, but also deeply personal and individual. Vulnerable, empathetic, connected.

Brands can communicate in a way that encourages empathy. Stories are one way to do this, as stories are how humans connect with each other. Sensitively deployed emotion is another way, a further way is to draw on all of our senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.

10. Archetypes are universally familiar characters that appear in stories that transcend time, place, culture, gender and age. C.G. Jung says archetypes do not have a well defined shape ‘but from the moment they become conscious, are namely nurtured with the stuff of conscious experience’.

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Chapter 3 | Humanising Brands

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Brand identity must remain centralRegardless of the way in which brands communicate with empathy, there needs to be a continued referral back to a brand’s identity.

Beautiful stories on their own may get people’s attention, but they will not contribute to a brand’s meaning. Emotion and richly sense driven expression may tantalise, but they will not make a brand meaningful.

Brands become meaningful where they are consistent in their identity and continually empathise with their audience. Brands become meaningful when they have meaning and work hard to make that meaning relevant to people.

To be trusted by humans to form a part of their identity, to be let into the psyche of people, a brand must understand the infinite game of meaning. It must be vulnerable, it must communicate with empathy, and it must know and remain true to its identity.

Brands become meaningful when they are humanised and given the opportunity to connect through vulnerability, empathy and emotion.

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Chapter 4 | Discussion Topics

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The Havas Media research shows that there is a huge disconnect between people and brand. Most people would not care if 74% of all brands disappeared for good.

What brands are meaningful to you? What is it that makes them meaningful?

The Havas Media research shows Meaningful Brands deliver 100% more KPI outcomes, gain, on average, 46% more share of wallet and outperform the stock market by 133%

If meaningfulness delivers positive business results, how can you find and express your brand’s meaning?

Sir Bob Geldof talks about an emerging world where people believe less in government, and more in business. 11

Can you imagine what your business looks like in this world? Where people believe in your brand?

Discussion Topics

11. Sir Bob Geldof at the Havas Cafe speaking about the crisis businesses and brands face.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YixDC1qN6dY

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Chapter 5 | Notes

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Notes

The Lover & The Engineer is dedicated to the creation of meaningful brands. A meaningful brand is able to connect with its customers on a deeper emotional level. We offer a variety of workshops, classes, resources and services to help businesses find and express their meaningfulness.

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PO Box 1299 West Leederville 6901www.lover-engineer.com

the business of meaning