A community brand? Never forget this

It could seem we are living a revolution about the brands in the last years. It could seem.  If you start to read a little, you’ll see since the humankind organized the commerce in the Ancient Age, it already spoke about brands, many of them referred to places. And it was enough the salesperson mentioned the site, whether it was true or not, for the client authomatically evaluated the purchasing option in terms of quality. And it was a wworldwide trend.

What happens is as we go into the real-time information society, the brands became more competitive than ever before. They have increased in number, some have increased their quality, but the manner to choose a brand has not changed in almost ten thousand years of history.

Then, why has it reached so much importance in the last decades? Simply, because if you don’t get to place your brand, you are not. And if you’re not, you don’t sell, understanding it as the process to provide a good or a service deserving a value in exchange, what doesn’t necessarily reduce to money.

 

So, what is a brand?

It’s every element  posible to see, to hear,  to perform once and once again in the same way, and what is our own , not nobody else’s. This is the fundamental requirement. It’s possible the others imitate it or overcome it, but what we are and it’s nobody else’s, it’s, precisely, our brand. So, each one is a brand. Then, each one has an own brand.

Although the components of a brand are different according to the author you consult, I think we can pay attention on three that are fundamental, in my opinion.

1. Name: It’s the word or words how we differentiate from others, and what is own. It can be written, spoken or sounded, or it can be both ways, but it’s ours and it allows us to differentiate from others in our species or any other species. No matter it’s a known name, a name I took from other language, the name of a place or a person, or even a name I invented, my brand makes known by a name, first.
2. Symbol: It’s, indeed, that artistic performance what is my own and nobody else’s or nothing else’s. Like the name, the symbol can be a graphic feature or a sounded performance.
3. Identity: It’s the whole set of characteristics those are ours and nobody else’s or nothing else’s, and those differentiate us from someone else or something else in an inmediate way. Said in five words: it is what describes us. So, our identity is unique, not nobody else’s.

Just an additional note about the identity of a brand. If somebody wants to be how I am, is imitating me. And if I want to be like somebody else, I’m imitating.

The imitation is not a kind of identity. It’s the absence of identity, rather, what is called alienation.

But, it’s supposed we are building a community brand.  We already reviwed what a brand is, but what about the community?

The community

A community is all human group that feels linked by a common origin, history, space, and objectives. Let’s go unwinding that concept.

• First, it’s a human group. It’s not an only-1-person set.
• Second, it feels linked. I mean it feels united, connected, joined, included. It’s not about we link them and that’s it. They’re people who feel that link goes beyond time and distance, at the point that although they’re too far, they ever will feel they’re here.

Then, let’s think of a community as the set of people within I ever want to be because I feel good, and the rest makes I feel OK. So, we feel as we were only one, Like we were a common unity. Like a common unity. Community. Once we get that almost magic feeling, the rest comes alone, especially the common objectives issue. And one of those ones may be the building of its own community brand.

If there’s not that sense of a community, so there’s no community brand neither. Of course, it could be managed as a brand the same, but it wouldn’t represent anybody but the person who manages it. That’s why the important is everyone feels included.

Why is the inclusion important?

The inclusion is the action to integrate. And that integration breaks out mainly from knowing to identify common insights in every person, despite the insights differentiating us. In fact, to integrate is to generate unity despite the differences. And we have to start from basic consensus for that.

A consensus is a unanimous agreement, an agreement of everyone without exception under we’ll do or leave to do something very real. Another aspect – a consensus is not the agreement a majority imposes to a minority, or the opposite. For we to talk about a consensus, we need the 100% agrees. Sure, we also could build agreements upon the majority’s opinion, but they’re not consensus. They’re majority agreements. I say it for the term not to be used wrong.

As much as there’s a consensus about what makes your community unique, every member will feel to contribute something useful that builds in favor of it. If that happens, then the community progresses. If despite the reached consensus, the people decide to go by their own, then it doesn’t work in a communitarian way but individual or rather group.

From these concepts (Brand, community, inclusion), we already can begin to work. So, what do we commit to by consensus? That’s the next step to make. You can write me at factortierra@gmail.com, talk to me on my Twitter account, or leaving me a comment right velow.