Naming and Branding Meditation Garden
Changing your company name? Naming a startup?
Looking for a new brand strategy? Sometimes the answer to a branding problem is not at
the intersection
of the specified vectors. Sometimes you need to hang a
left at the 7-Eleven. Sometimes you need to back up and get some
distance on the problem. One
thing's for sure. The process of planting ideas in other people's heads is a pretty delicate one.
a portfolio approach
to branding:
"About half of my designs
are controlled fantasy,
15% are total madness
and the rest are
bread-and-butter designs."
Manolo Blahnik
branding 101a:
"The discovery of the alphabet
will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls
because they will not use their memories;
they will trust to the external written characters
and not remember of themselves...
You give your disciples not truth but only
the semblance of truth; they will be heroes
of many things, and will have learned nothing;
they will appear to be omniscient and will
generally know nothing."
Socrates. "Phaedrus"
you can't limit the
power of branding:
The difference between stupidity and
genuis is that genuis has its limits.
Albert Einstein
always rebuilding the model:
We build up whole cultural
patterns based on past "facts"
which are extremely selective.
When a new fact comes in that
does not fit the pattern, we
don't throw out the pattern.
We throw out the fact.
Robert Pirsig
corporate branding guidelines:
When people are free to do as they please,
they usually imitate each other.
E.L. Kersten
the enemy seems to be
wearing our uniform:
"Size seems to make many organisations
slow-thinking, resistant to change, and smug."
Warren Buffett
product for our times:
In anything at all, perfection
is finally attained not when there
is no longer anything to add,
but when there is no longer
anything to take away, when a body
has been stripped down to its
nakedness.
Antoine de Saint Exupery
what's worth protecting:
Only puny secrets need
protection. Big discoveries
are protected by public
incredulity.
Marshall McLuhan
finding the right
company names:
Mastering yourself
makes you fearless.
Lao Tzu
gonzo branding strategy:
But now I was in a foreign land and
I felt it my foreign duty to deliver
something they had never seen before.
Hunter S. Thompson
on thinking outside the box:
There is no box.
Amory Lovins
start at the beginning:
If you wish to make an apple
pie from scratch, you must
first create the universe.
Carl Sagan
branding strategy:
There is no need to run outside
For better seeing, . . .
. . . Rather abide
At the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart and see
. . .
The way to do it is to be.
Lao Tzu
creating a new company?
To take flight
You gotta plan right.
The Black Eyed Peas
branding methodology:
act
in
accord
with obstacles
using
them
to find or define the process.
John Cage
how to pick a company name:
In baiting a mousetrap
with cheese,
always leave room
for the mouse.
Saki
branding strategy:
Why does one chess player
play better than another?
The answer is not that the
one who plays better makes
fewer mistakes.
The one who plays better
makes more mistakes,
by which I mean
more imaginative mistakes.
He sees more ridiculous
alternatives.
The mark of a great player
is exactly that he thinks
of something which
by all known norms of the
game is an error.
Jacob Bronowski
marketing brief:
Don't sell roses
in a fish market.
Brother Theodore
don't waste your time:
And then there's the story
of the great Dante specialist,
who had spent his whole life
studying the great poet,
to the neglect of his family,
his pleasures, and his children.
Finally, he lay dying.
The family gathered around his bed,
to hear his immortal last words.
He murmured,
"Dante bores the shit out of me."
Salvador Dali
hold that thought:
In every work of genius
we recognize our own
rejected thoughts;
they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
building a brand:
When I lately stood with a friend
before the cathedral of Amiens
he asked me how it happens that we
can no longer build such piles?
I replied: 'Dear Alphonse, men in
those days had convictions, we
moderns have opinions. It requires
something more than an opinion
to build a Gothic cathedral.'
Heinrich Heine
keep your feet on the ground:
Cloud 9 gets
all the publicity,
but Cloud 8 is
actually cheaper,
less crowded,
and has a better
view.
George Carlin
branding is like life:
I always play what I feel.
I always feel like me,
But I'm a different me every day.
Playing is like life.
Either you feel it or you don't.
Erroll Garner
where the best ideas come from:
College: two hundred people
reading same book. An obvious
mistake. Two hundred people
can read two hundred books.
John Cage
branding from the inside out:
In order for you to have
a dialogue with someone else,
you first need to have a
dialogue with yourself.
Thich Naht Hahn
good naming advice:
A feeling is much
stronger than a thought.
U2
don't ask too many questions:
We have explanations for everything, even
when we claim we don't. I call explanations
pacifiers, to stop asking questions.
Humberto Maturana
the innermost qualities:
I can see through him
like one can see through
water in the sink. And I
know what's in there and
what can be mobilized and
what can be articulated.
And I know the energy and
his so-called insanity
and how to evoke it--how
to bring it to life. And
that's why he feels safe
when we work together.
Werner Herzog on Klaus Kinski
brand aspiration:
Don't give them what you think
they want. Give them what they
never thought was possible.
Orson Welles
what you really want:
Don't tell me you want
a bridge, show me the
canyon you want to cross.
J Mayes
keep your eye on the ball:
We're tough on the work.
But not on each other.
Bono
who changes things:
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round
pegs in the square holes - the
ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules and
they have no respect for the
status quo. You can praise them,
disagree with them, glorify or
vilify them. About the only
thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
Apple Computer ad, 1997
into the unknown:
I purposely don't
go into a project
that I know how
to do.
Robert Altman
walt kelly on branding:
We are confronted by
insurmountable opportunities.
Walt Kelly, From Pogo
not how we learned it:
The visionary is
the only true realist.
Federico Fellini
how to get people to
pay attention to you:
If you want an audience,
start a fight.
Banksy
stand for something:
The only difference between perception
and hallucination is consensus.
Humberto Maturana
true in business, too:
They always say time changes things,
but you actually have to change them
yourself.
Andy Warhol
naming a new business?
All I know about method
is that when
I am not working,
I sometimes think
I know something.
But when I am working,
it is quite clear
I know nothing.
John Cage
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