Signals of Significance
“I can’t live without this.”
Brands have the most influential storytelling capabilities on the planet. Second only to the stories we tell ourselves. The more significant the story, the more attention it gets. But significance evolves overtime. So does what is worthy of attention. So, how do brands build significance in the age of attention? An idea that works for me, is to optimise for signals of significance.
Signals of Significance:
Give significance
Have significance
Find significance
Give Significance
There will always be an opportunity to help a person build self efficacy in their life, irrespective of lifetime customer value. Giving a person the tools to build significance in their own life by achieving a specific goal, is a good way to get paid. A brand that encourages our ‘I can do this’ attitude for the first time, changes lives.
A brand that successfully builds a community to validate our ‘it worked for them, why not me?’ voice, changes lives. A brand that encourages self-belief with a ‘you got this’ mentality, changes lives. A brand that builds self confidence to manage and navigate negative emotions, will not only change lives, but save lives too.
These are the stakes of effective brand building. Knowing how to give significance will shape everything you build. (And keep you honest). Not every brand needs to be an educational institution, social enterprise, or buy-one-give-one business model. But brands do need to give significance if they want to have significance. It’s a two-way street.
“People like us do things like this” — Seth Godin
Have Significance
To have significance is to be a coveted instrument for self expression and a symbol of identity. A beverage. A book. A bag. A band. A building. A camera. A character. A city. A coat. A computer. An event. A font. A food. A game. A guitar. A holiday. A mobile phone. A movie. A pair of shoes. A person. A restaurant. A song. A sport. A suit. A watch.
All these examples—and many more—are symbols of individual and collective expression that signal status, competence and virtue, or a combination of all three. Notice toilet paper, shoelaces and tweezers are not on the list? Not all successful businesses are successful brands.
If tomorrow I need to buy toilet paper and the usual is out of stock, I’ll choose the alternative—rational. If the cool box I want to buy is out of stock, and I decide to join a waitlist for five months just to be in with a chance of getting the next one—irrational.
Irrational beliefs, irrational emotions and irrational behaviour, are all signals that a brand has achieved significance in a person's identity.
“Find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.” — Larry Winget
Be Significant
At risk of diluting my theory of significance, I have intentionally not defined ‘be significant’ as an option. I struggle to rationalise the same honourable intentions found in giving, having, and finding significance. Ego is an unhelpful bottleneck in building a brand. Adding delusions of grandeur is a recipe for disaster, or a cult.
Rest assured, there is no shortage of people trying to be significant in the world. The playbook is well documented. (No one man should have all that power). In French ‘to have’ (avoir) and ‘to be’ (être) are important auxiliary verbs to differentiate. There is a contradiction between English and French I think is relevant…
In English we say ‘I am hungry’. In French we’d say ‘I have hunger’ (j’ai faim). ‘I am significant’ feels arrogant. ‘I have significance’ sounds like you did the work. The desire to be significant may be a powerful human motivator, but it is a contradiction to a brand’s purpose.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman
Find Significance
Good ideas eventually rise to the top (with a little hard work and delayed gratification). Perhaps not to the top of the S&P 500, but still a top proportionate to the problem solved. Purpose is found in the pursuit of a worthy and significant goal. A brand in pursuit of an insignificant goal won’t go the distance, or make the cut.
Finding purpose in the pursuit of a significant goal is the promise a brand makes not just to their customers, but to themselves. Branding is a verb for a reason. You have to take action in a direction that matters, even if it only matters to you.
“Courage is found in unlikely places” — J. R. R. Tolkien
Connect Tristan Dunbar Follow on X @tristanidea
