In the film Inception, DiCaprio’s team has created a VR world so real that one of the movie’s characters is fooled into believing it’s real life. But as he falls to the floor in one scene, and feels the carpet against his face, he begins to feel the texture of it, and suddenly, it doesn’t feel “right.” He becomes aware that this is not reality.
When you are weaving the fabric of your brand’s reality, you have to think in this top to bottom way- you have to explore every facet of it, and really understand what it is- what feelings you are trying to evoke, and what parts of the clients imagination you are trying to interact with. They need to know that it’s “real”- and this is why brands that are truly sincere have the best chance of succeeding.
If it feels like bullshit, it’s probably bullshit.
The fact is, if you’ve got something to sell me, I need a reason to buy.
There are a lot of ways to give a client this reason, but the customer of today doesn’t want to be “sold to” in the traditional sense. They want to be engaged with- they are looking for an experience.
It’s not enough to appeal to people emotionally, or to have an “edgy” brand with some cool looking products and then sit there with baited breath hoping people will click “buy.”
In fact, if your first driving desire when creating your brand is to “get rich” or simply make money, you’re already making a misstep. The reason to start your own “brand,” the only one that matters, is because you have to.
The word brand comes from an Old Norse word meaning “burn.” You have to be on fire with the need to create this, to live this mission, and to get it everything you’ve got. If you don’t love it, you’ll not likely succeed.
If you are actually serious about building and establishing a brand with staying power, something that people will identify with, remember, and eventually grow to love, you have to appeal to their imagination. You have to create worlds.
Good brand creators are world-builders. They use the ideas of identity and ideology to form the borders and boundaries of their world, and they populate it with texture, emotion, and elements that will resonate strongly with their desired “niche” on a deep level.
See, when you exist as a brand, what you are really looking to do is create a universe, a virtual reality that your clients can exist inside of, for as long as they are interfacing with your brand in any way- be that on Instagram, your website, or even as they wear or use your product and imagine themselves as a part of this world you’ve created for them to live in.
What does that world feel like?
What is the texture there?
Creators and brand-builders need to be so immersed in the REALITY of their brand that every aspect of it contains further evidence of its sincerity, the genuine nature of it. If the surface of it is scratched, it cannot show plastic underneath.
What is it that you are looking to create with your brand? What type of world is it that you are trying to express, and how do you want it to make your target audience feel, or how do you want it to captivate their imagination?
These are the questions that matter when you set out to create a brand worth supporting, worth interacting with, worth existing within.