the power of ambiance and the brand

Ambiance

Over the past couple of years I have observed something in the brand space that I feel is going to have a major impact on the art of branding as it pertains to the personal brand. 

When personal branding started being recognized as one of the dynamics of the branding experience, we, as designers and brand builders looked at the development process much the same way as we did the corporate brand. In essence we have spent the past 5 - 10 years consulting and designing brands for the personal brand just as we did for the brick and mortar counterparts, and I feel this was and is the wrong approach. 

Martin Lindstrom and his agency Brand Sense enlightened us to the ideas of 5D branding. His ideals re-shaped how viewed the branding experience very early on on my career. His approach was far more dynamic than the 2D branding that I had been exposed to prior. The idea is simple... Most brand appeal to one of our senses, sight, which leaves a great deal of the senses out of the equation, and we all know that we are shifted in our thinking and actions not only by the incorporation of one of our sense, but all 5. 

This is where I struggled. While in the trench's creating brands, I always knew that I wanted to appeal to more than just the "eyes" of my audience and I wanted to in-fact go deeper. I wanted to build brand experiences in a fresh new way that appealed to the 5 senses that we have at our disposal. When looking at this from a brick and mortar context, the projects had to be really big, and really well funded to accomplish the task at hand. In the realm of Brick and Mortar brand experience it almost always started off with the hieroglyphics, the symbols that told the companies story. The hieroglyphics would, of course, range through the iconic representation of the brand (logo mark) to the colors and typography (keeping things simple), then we would venture into the environment or the culture of the brand, bringing form to space, and again... Telling the brand story visually. From time to time we would run into the client that would take this process a step further and dive into the auditory range of the brand, and we would find ourselves building the melodic compositions that would be played in the lobby's of our clients environments, and we would have some idea of branding beyond the visual space. 

Personal branding came on the scene, and the art of brand building changed, however; because we, as designers continued to build brands the same way we did for brick and mortar brand champions, we approached the process the same, NOT REALIZING that we had a lot more to work with. AND though subtle as they may be, the personal brand, the HUMAN has a lot more to offer in the terms of branding experience than the brick and mortar identity. The HUMAN has ambiance, or a "mood" a "feeling" that can be translated through the brand. When looked at correctly, the ambiance of the personal brand becomes far more powerful than the hieroglyphics associated with the brand. 

SO this raised a question... Does the personal brand NEED a symbolic representation? DO we need to be creating logo marks for the presonal brand OR is the ambiance of the brand the actual brand language of the personal brand? 

When I think about personal brands.. Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, BK Mac Daddy, John Lusher, Staci J. Shelton, Hajj Flemings and Jim Hunt, I have NO CLUE of what their hieroglyphics look like, in fact, I am not even sure if they have them, BUT what I do know is this... Each of them evoke feelings in me. The ambiance of each of these brands move me. Gary Vaynerchuk brings energy, Tom Peters brings power and curiosity, John Lusher brings solid surety, and I could go on... BUT I think you get the idea. 

As "makers" and "creators" of brands, we need to think dynamically different about the brand experience as it pertains to humans. We have to be able to get out of our desire to create hieroglyphics, and we need to really start thinking about the totality of the brand experience. The 5D approach to branding is at our doorstep, and it's time to really start investigating it...