Coming Out as a Brand Strategist
The process of growth and redesigning your life over and over again comes with some big reveal moments. You get to introduce an updated version of yourself to the world. This is one of those moments: coming out as a brand strategist.
Throughout my entire professional life, I bounced around for a bit: moving from Marketing and Graphic Design to Sociology and finally HR and Org Development before I launched Intooit. A rather meandering path to Branding Strategy if there ever was one.
But this meandering path in itself is what makes me, and Intooit by extension, rich with a broad understanding of complex behavior. It wasn't always clear, but looking back now, this curiosity about the human mind, in context, comes up as a clear red line through it all.
The context is as important as the agent. This is where personality is shaped by and reacts to the environment (i.e. everything from our friends and family, to the company culture, social media, or the mall). At some level, the products, services, and Brands that we choose are the supporting characters in our own narrative and effort to achieve our own goals and desires.
The problem is that these characters are for the most part badly written. Can't make sense of them, can't trust them. The more they (i.e. the brands) behave in a consistent way, the more we understand them, we can "read" them better. And the more we can read them, the more we trust them. And we all know trust is at the basis of every good relationship
Branding is in essence the process of shaping and clarifying the business personality, so it connects to the world in a consistent way. By understanding WHO the Brand is, WHY it exists, and HOW it relates to the real world, we are essentially defining this abstract but very real entity.
So Intooit is my way to use this curiosity, turned passion, turned profession, to help you make sense of it all as well. Because once you define your business' personality, and reach that clarity, everything just clicks in a natural way. The customers and employees that need you in their own narrative will recognize you and will gravitate towards you.
Every beginning is scary. Even though I've done it many times, every single time is scary in a brand new way. But what I came to understand is that it's supposed to feel like this before the jump. It's about that risk and reward thing, they usually go hand in hand. For all I know, it could all turn into an epic fail, and still, I'd be happy to have done it. At the very least it will be a powerful lesson, I will score some serious life experience, and I'll probably get a good story out of it. And at best, I will get closer to a purposeful life. So... I think I like my win-win chances.