Branding
-
Radical Authenticity: Your Mind Makes It Real
The power of storytelling in the world of authentic branding There is a scene, early on in The Matrix, where Neo and Morpheus are fighting in a simulator, and when they’re done, Neo realizes his mouth is bleeding. “I thought it wasn’t real,” says Neo. “Your mind makes it real,” says Morpheus. I was watching a video of Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario, and he was talking about their early attempts at making viral marketing videos. One of them involved taking a few vials of blood from skateboard legend Tony Hawk, then pouring that blood into a gallon of red paint. That paint then became the primary color of a limited edition series…
-
Why There’s No Substance Behind Your Sparkle
Generative AI is technoglitter, the cheap bedazzling of marketing and entertainment with dubious results As far as I’m concerned, generative AI is little more than the bedazzling of marketing and entertainment by feckless tech bros looking to make a quick buck. The technoglitter of the 21st century. A whole lot of sparkle with very little substance. Look what I did! Even though it looks difficult, complicated, and expensive, it took almost no work on my part and cost me next to nothing. Isn’t that something? It is something. The technology is truly impressive. Someone taught a computer to create derivative art by stealing the work of real artists, and then you asked it to replicate…
-
Better Brand Engagement Through Creative Storytelling
The path to better consumer engagement lies in making the customer the hero of the story Suddenly, everyone is a storyteller. As if stories haven’t been at the heart of human culture since the dawn of time. It’s easy sometimes to become enamored with all our technological advances and arrogantly believe we have transcended our primitive roots. We can ignore the stories now and get right to the details. Forget the narrative and show them the goods. The thing is, that’s rarely the case. Eventually, we come back down to earth and realize that it’s all storytelling in the end. The biggest obstacle facing most brands today is the ability to…
-
Why Storytellers Matter
An international branding expert explores the value of authentic storytelling and how it informs the practical world Not long after we crawled out of the primordial ooze and discovered fire, human beings began to tell stories. We started painting on cave walls to document our lives, and as our brains and soft palettes developed, we told stories. Eventually, we learned to draw pictures of the sounds we made and began to write our stories down. We told stories to explain the world around us, where we had come from, where we were headed, and why we were here. From this humble beginning, we branched out to religion, science, history, art,…
