Entries from February 2008 ↓

The first asset that Patrick Hanlon identifies in Primal Branding is the origin story.

This tells where the group, product, or person comes from and indicates where it is going. It provides context. It provides something for people to connect to.

Often, a creation story invokes a quest or a vision for the future. For example, Nike’s founding story involves trying to create the perfect running shoe. Starbucks’ founding story is about serving the perfect cup of coffee. MoveOn’s tells of trying to get the country to move on from the attempts to impeach Clinton and get on with the business of the country.

Creation stories also often involve overcoming adversity. FedEx’s founder going on to start the company after his marketing prof. laughed at him. A free South Africa emerging despite the oppression of the Afrikaner minority.

Storytelling guru Andy Goodman recommends that every nonprofit have a bank of stories at hand, one of which is the creation story, and I’ve found it useful to be able to tell ICPJ’s creation story to explain our origins in bringing people together from different faiths and backgrounds to work for peace.

(For more of my thoughts on primal branding, visit the table of contexts post)

Primal Branding is a take on how to create something that people connect to on an emotional level–something they believe in.

Whether it’s a product, a cause, a company, a movement, a person, a religion, or whatever, Patrick Hanlon discusses his take on how to make this into a powerful, “primal brand” that people connect to.

Hanlon identifies seven pieces of the “primal code” that help create something (he uses “brand” to refer to all of these) that people connect to:

• the creation story,
• the creed,
• the icons,
• the rituals,
• the pagans,
• the sacred words, and
• the leader.

I’ll take a look at these seven pieces and how Hanlon brings them together in subsequent posts.

But first, does his premise makes sense for community organizations.

It depends.

For organizations like ICPJ, the NAACP, MoveOn, I think it does. Even if we’re wicked-effective, we won’t have funders or activists if we don’t create positive, emotional connections with people.

For some organizations, however, I don’t think it does. I’m not convinced that GetDowntown needs people to believe in the organization to convince people to change their commuting behavior. They do need businesses and employees to believe that biking, bussing, carpooling, walking, or telecommuting are good commuting choices, but they may not need a “primal brand.”

Good ideas are important to our work as organizers, and if we’re lucky we have lots of volunteers and activists sharing their good ideas with us. Listen to them, but be careful, good ideas will kill you…

• If you try to do them all,
• If they pull you off your mission,
• If you’re too frantic to use them well,
• If you’re too insistent on executing them perfectly,
• If you don’t know how to say “no,”
• If they distract you from the work at hand,
• If you don’t know how to listen to them,
• If you’re afraid to refine them,
• If you’re afraid to try them,
• If you’re afraid not to try them.

May you have more good ideas than you can implement, the wisdom to know which ones to run with, and the courage to say “no” to the good ideas that you can’t properly implement.

A good friend of mine gave me a copy of Bitch Magazine: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture.

Now, sometimes my reading gets a bit behind, so this issue is from 2004, but it had a great interview with Jennifer Abbot who co-directed The Corporation, a documentary critiquing corporate personhood.

The movie includes a discussion of how Ray Anderson, CEO of the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, decided to focus his company on ecologically sustainable production.

To me, this shows the danger of the “don’t even talk to the bosses” approach of Jeffrey Shantz in We Are Everywhere.

We do need to talk to them. We do need to pressure them. Abbott tells us that “Anderson’s paradigm shift happened through pressure exerted by customers and employees–so the strategy of applying pressure on a corporation to be environmentally sustainable can have an effect. ”

It’s not the only strategy, but it’s a valuable one.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying The Tent of Abraham, which looks at the story of Abraham through Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives and explores how it can be a tale of peacemaking.

One thing that struck me is the discussions of the world’s diversity in the book.

For example, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center explores how the story of the tower of Babel is a story of rejecting a centralized imperial globalism (as Sumeria was trying to create at the time) in favor of diverse grassroots communities each with their own tongue and customs.

(The folks at We Are Everywhere would love this interpretation).

Likewise, the Qur’an celebrates human diversity. It says:

‘O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another.’ (49:13a)

And of course the Baha’i faith has beautiful writings about the value of diversity.

If the flowers of a garden were all of one color, the effect would be monotonous to the eye; but if the colors are variegated, it is most pleasing and wonderful. The difference in adornment of color and capacity of reflection among the flowers gives the garden its beauty and charm. Therefore, although we are of different individualities, different in ideas and of various fragrances, let us strive like flowers of the same divine garden to live together in harmony. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 24)

There is a tendency in this world to promote our way as the one and true way, to declare our people as the only good people, and our thoughts as the only credible thoughts.

These passages and interpretations remind us that the glory of creation is that there are many peoples, many perspectives, and many things to enjoy.

And this is a good thing.

Politcally, then, when policies or prejudices exclude some people or leave some groups out, then we are all diminished. To use the Baha’i example, we have lost flowers from our garden.

That’s why efforts to dismantle racism, to actively recruit diverse candidates, and to make sure that everyone has access to opportunity are so important.

We are all created by God, with all of our blessed diversity. We are all God’s people. We all share God’s earth.
And to make sure that all God’s people have access to all the bounty God’s earth is to do God’s work of justice.

If Peter Brinkerhoff is right, I sure do.

That is, if I want to reach younger audiences. In his latest Mission Based Management Newsletter he writes,

My daughter Caitlin, who is a college sophomore and 19, informed me last summer in no uncertain terms that “no one uses email, no one listens to voice mail, Dad.“

And this is a story I’ve heard from other people in higher ed.

Last night, ICPJ hosted a Dinner and a Movie, and let me just say that the crowd was decidedly not of the Facebook generation. So, if we want to stay relevant (or maybe become relevant) to a younger generation, this tells me that we’re going to need to actively invest in working with them on their terms, using their technology.

Facebook it is.

Just don’t make me twitter.