What makes us…us and not someone else? In other words, what shapes us, polishes us? This question fascinates me. Mysterious alchemy at work in the identity formation process! Because yes, there is a bit of magic pixie dust… A touch of innateness and a lot of construction in all this. Although they can become overwhelming, our identities are not wild flowers growing haphazardly. When I think about it, it actually makes me dizzy. The world suddenly appears to me as the sum, the subtraction, the division, the multiplication, the replication of all these identities and selves projected and released there, in the middle of nature. After all, couldn’t it be one and the same person? No. Don’t stop reading. I will not dip into science fiction. I will not improvise myself as a philosopher, or a moralist, or an anthropologist or anything else. A bit bucolic, I grant you. But beyond the flowers of rhetoric or the flowers of the fields, this question of identity remains. It haunts me. Why ?
Diver
It’s part of my job. Create brand identities. But also, an inner journey that questions me about myself. What we are, who we are (obviously a never linear state, too easy!) has the incredible power to influence the world. To modify perceptions, realities, achievements. So, when I am entrusted with the creation of a brand identity (whether an individual or a company), I put myself in demiurge mode. I endorse the brief as one would put on a diving suit.
I see it as an exploratory, almost initiatory journey. With a very clear destination ahead. To bring out a beautiful soul, an individual made of flesh, blood, memory, beauty. A person with questions and doubts. Whose actions will have the ability to move us forward. Collectively. Because nothing less is expected from brands. Because this is how serious as it gets.
I therefore fully assume my tropism: anthropomorphizing brands.
I hear you say 2 things.
1: What makes humans so special or inspiring? (I have no reply to this and leave it to your own appreciation😊)
2. There‘s nothing new. You are absolutely right. Some brands have done it fantastically well and there has been a prolific literature on this subject for almost twenty years.
- As early as 2010, @Adamwaytz, psychologist and teacher at Northwestern University’s Kellogg school of management, pointed out the following: the process of humanizing brands turns them into conscious, thoughtful and intentional entities. With which people can potentially build social relationships. Visionary!
- The same year, Chandler and Schwarz demonstrate that anthropomorphizing brands considerably reduces the possibility and the desire to replace them.
- In his paper on anthropomorphism and augmented reality in the retail sector in 2019, @VanEsch indicates how the anthropomorphization of experiences makes individuals more likely to develop a positive attitude towards brands. Especially when it comes to new technology.
- Last but not least, humanizing brands is proved to strengthen the emotional connection and the feeling of identification of the public with them, according to Tuskej and Podnar in 2018. Something you are very familiar with.
No wonder marketers happily surfed the wave; synthesizing it in the concept of Brand persona, a fictitious personality supposed to represent the brand and in a projective way, its audience.
In short, everything has been said and I am too late.
Not really.
Many brands and companies continue to serve us an ersatz of humanity, sewn with white thread. Whereas humanizing a brand should embrace the complexities of the human being itself!
So, I work on every aspect coming into play in the development of an identity: self-awareness, language, memory, history, genetic heritage (!!!), physical appearance, health card… You get the picture. An identity is important. It has to have thickness, texture and saturation. A temperature. To be able change the world.
For paper, flammable, disposable identities, I am afraid that you’ve come to the wrong address!
Hell is not always other people
Our identities are built on the relationship we have with others. With their ideas, actions or productions. Belonging, opposition, reconciliation, there is a little of the three. Think of McDonald’s and Burger King. In a less prosaic register, another example. It is located at 7 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, in Paris.
At Afikaris art gallery, until September 17, several artists reinvent the work of their illustrious predecessors. To find and express new personal trajectories. Thus, “PO. Box Humanitarian Aid Plan@yahoo.fr”, by the young Cameroonian Jean David Nkot, reinterprets “the entombment of Christ” by Caravaggio, 420 years his senior. Nkot dramatizes (this blue!) the body of the crucified, exploited worker. Sacrificed on the altar of the extraction of natural resources.
Further on, the Nigerian Matthew Eguavoen follows the emblematic tradition of studio photography à la Seydou Keita. Explores his relationship to fatherhood. Makes the voice of the father resonate. Even miles away. That we can still hear when we have left our continent. A way for the artist to put his roots and identity at the centre of the canvas.
“Who gets to swim?” by Ghanaian Richard Mensah tables the issue of social inequalities in his country via the swimming pool, a prerogative of the wealthy classes. David Hockney’s work thus offers him a space for reflection that he reinvests to think about social identity.
This intertextuality/hypertextuality is familiar to us.
Appropriation and/or reinterpretation of existing works constitute a fertile ground for artists since the dawn of time! But not only. For all of us. We do the same when we share content, ‘tag’ an individual, insert links in our publications, parody or fake a video on Tik Tok. These links reveal us.
Our identity originates in what we read, in everything we see or hear. Feeds on what others around us are or are not, say or do not say. Our identity looks like a hybrid cultural patchwork, often sinuous, sometimes monstrous!
How does this impact brand identity work exactly?
In everything. Are you initiating some work on your branding? Keep the human component in mind. Don’t stay on the surface. (Even though surfaces can be very reassuring). What is your brand made of? What are its/her/his cultural motives? What are its/his/her haunting metaphors and personal myths? Its/his/her cultural referents? Its/his/her imaginary museum? Your brand identity is a crossroads of micro-identities. Exploit them!
Indeed, your brand should have a toothache.
Design your brand identity as a living fabric, which breathes, has fantasies and insomnia. You will end up with a real brand identity. With significance. This will help you nourishing and potentiating your internal, external, adjacent, parallel narrative. Will constitute an inexhaustible base of conversations since by definition identity is a matter in motion. (As such your brand identity should not be conceived as a closed unit).
This is absolutely not a question of using cultural references in your communication. Rather to understand & express your intertextual and cultural inner system.
So, what makes you you and not someone else? You.
To continue the conversation, discover my signature tool: the Brand alphabet. quest@2ruesaint-georges.com
