How to Know If Your Brand is Playing to Your Strengths?

Below is Episode 13 of One Minute Wednesday and it has everything to do with making a measurable dent, intelligently playing to your strengths, maximizing your time, and having a brand that rises above the noise.

The great jazz legend Miles Davis said, “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

Replacing the word “play” in the above quote with the word “do” or “develop” and this defines what we in business know as rebels, disruptors, and innovators. It’s the power of words at play.

This is vastly different from classical, where your role is to play what’s there: you don’t veer off, you play exactly what’s written. Even solos are written out, note for note. Don’t get me wrong: classical can be done at a genius level, but it doesn’t commonly incorporate that spontaneous combustion of jazz.

Knowing this difference is as important as knowing the difference between sales and branding.

This is as true for companies and cultures as it is for brands. That’s what inspired this video a few weeks ago:

Failure to Know Which You Are Isn’t an Option

Brands are either Jazz or they’re Classical in their approach to Design, Voice, and Culture….

Jazz is nimble, embraces mistakes, knows how to improvise.

Classical is technically precise but follows to the letter every note, every change in tempo, every nuance.

Jazz thrives on change, exploration, and discovery. Classical has as its hallmark technical perfection by the finest musicians in the world.

Each approach gets things done in the world, just in different ways.

Giving a project that demands spontaneous, “out-of-the-box” thinking to a team that is “classical” in its approach will die, or at best, struggle.

And giving a technically precise and exacting project to a group that thrives best with looser parameters (yet very high demands on creativity) will equally be challenged and more than likely fail in some way.

It’s just placing the wrong skill sets in the wrong settings.

The same is true for brands. Some are simply great: technically, you know exactly what you’re getting with no variations. Others require an ability to adapt to consumer shifts in timing or in variety (like in restaurants). The world needs both. 

So for any brand, knowing this is a matter of using people better, playing on their strengths, and maximizing the inherent attributes that are ready to be harnessed.

Playing to Your Strengths (So Your Customers Know Your Sweet Spot)

For me, it’s best when you have the best of both worlds so you can improvise when needed and be technically brilliant when needed as well.

But if your brand leans one way or another, it’s vital to know so you can tie this into your brand, its story, and your brand culture as I cover in this week’s episode of One Minute Wednesday:

Realize that brands are either more Jazz or they’re more Classical in their overall approach to Design, Voice, and Culture…

Isolating which you are is playing to your strengths, and the sure way to really win as a brand and with customers.

Want all the tools of playing to your strengths? Then go ahead and grab your copy of Brand Intervention here.

If You Missed Prior Episodes, Here’s the Brand Intervention Compilation You Can’t Afford to Miss