You need proper context and entourage to elevate yourself, but above all you need mystery and myth. To transcend the everyday, you must rise to a higher level. Just associating emotions with your brand is not enough. You need to lift people and connect them with what they want to be, what could be: it is about aspiration. This is why we made Writing Your Myth the second step to create an UeberBrand, right after Setting Your Mission. A brand narrative is not just a means to structure and integrate communications and interactions, it’s primarily a way to shine brighter and lead higher, to hold meaning and have cultural significance, to inspire followers and all of us to move up and on. For the same reason, not just any story will do, you need one with mythical qualities Myths talk about our “collective dreams”, as Joseph Campbell put it. They hold us together as societies, connect groups and inspire movements, and help us individually figure out who we are, what we want to be and where we want to go. Just look at Tesla, which is much more than a story of technological advance. It is the myth of a maverick breaking boundaries, taking us higher and further than we thought possible. That’s what makes the brand take such a strong Ueber-Position. DON’T DECLARE. DO We are living in an experience economy. People are sick and tired of dull, selfcongratulatory brand promotions, even if they’re just watching some tacky ‘unboxing’ on YouTube. They want brands to add value when they pop up, not just promise it. Ueber-Brands thrive on ‘ideas that do’. The whole content and community craze in marketing has certainly led to some excess – not every shampoo needs to come with a tutorial in female equality. But there is no way back. The “podcast class” as The New York Times called it, prefers entertainment and education, advice, support, connections and experiences over unrequested and uninteresting brand declarations or irrelevant messages. Who can blame them? One of the biggest advantages of the digital revolution is that brands have many more (often more economic and effective) opportunities to engage with people directly. Let us use them and think twice before we resort to shouting or retarget them with the 20th offer on Venice flights they booked three months ago. Creativity no longer means sugarcoating the “bitter” brand message. The challenge we all face it to constantly develop new, surprising ways for our brand to positively impact people’s lives and societies as a whole. Gucci did a stellar job surprising and entertaining us in a pandemic year. And so did Louis Vuitton and their ‘Zoom with friends adventures’. Hublot introduced a Digital Boutique, allowing customer to connect with the store for a real-life consultation online. But ‘doing’ is not just the imperative in engaging and interacting with your targets. It is the rule for brand-building overall. This is why doing comes before brands start talking and daring. You must live your brand mission and myth in all you do. Declaring without doing is not good, but not doing as declared is worse. JP Kuehlwein (left) is the co-founder and principal at UeberBrands, an advisory firm helping ‘elevate brands to make brands priceless’ and adjunct Professor of Marketing at Columbia University. He earned a postgraduate degree in Business Analysis from Lancaster University Management School in 1992. This article is based on his book, Brand Elevation – Lessons in UeberBranding, co-authored with Wolf Schaefer (right). It features input from marketing leaders from Starbucks, Acqua di Parma, YouTube and Airbnb, among others. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 43 One of the biggest advantages of the digital revolution is that brands have many more (often more economic and effective) opportunities to engage with people directly. ʻʻ ʼʼ
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