Tom Peters made some sequence of offerings wrapped around the space of human branding. That is the idea that you are a brand, worth telling your story, and that people will be paying attention to you. And surely there are plenty of people worth paying attention to. And some less so, of course.?
The possibility of being a human brand, it seems worth measuring and exploring what a brand actually is. And there are lots of definitions about it. But to my measure, the notion of brand is inextricably attached to fire. 1000 years ago, the monastery at Lindisfarne, this word — brand — was first used (or so defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, that spends lots of time trying to send people to collect cards for sorting on word usage. Find a word, notate a card, send it to the chief lexicographer @ OED. That’s the way they used to do it, in any case.)
The point is, what’s your fire? In gathering around the sensate experience of a campfire telling, something that is wholly sensual in contact, every sense exposed, there’s a deeper story. People fit that model well; the more rich the intimacy of the contact, the context, the connection, the more you know…
In a “date” with Samantha, we talked about exploring that idea. How to actively advance her story in the context of layered connection? There’s all the standard exposures, things like “being there”, parties, events, media assemblies — and there’s the idea of incessantly re-pitching stories as variations on a theme. What does Samantha’s story stand for? The right touch, the right insight, the authentic match? It’s all of these, I’m sure. And in telling her story, offering her insights, what I mentioned is that she needs her own “match made” in the form of a linked assistant that lives close, breathes the same air, and knows the story. And where that story can go. And what’s the right new angle to pursue more…My assistant is more like a partner that knows it all. Can speak for me, and lives in my world and can help me get to the right place, the right time, the right connections. A kind of matchmaker, too. A good thing…