Primal Branding: Response & Reaction Part III (Conclusion)

To wrap up the discussion (lecture?) and critique of Primal Branding, I want to highlight where I think Hanlon could extend his research. Two key sections are the (1) shelf-life of a brand, identity, or community belief system; and (2) the competing reasons why one may participate in a rhetorical vision/community and carry a particular symbolic identity.

Rhetorical Vision Lifecycle: The Shelf-Life of a Brand
Without a theory, you can’t tell a fact from a non-fact. You don’t know if something is valuable or not, or why something may be important. A theory provides a lens to view the universe of phenomena in a meaningful way. SCT gives us the ability to see, understand, explain and predict symbolic phenomena and human behavior. When it comes to groups, teams, tribes, and communities, we have a parsimonious way to understand behavior (meaning, motive, identity, and emotion) by using the SCT lens.

Rhetorical visions (i.e. belief systems), are a living organism – they have a predictable lifecycle. The lifecycle can be shortened or extended (if you know what buttons and levers are useful in adjusting and framing the vision). The vision can be viral and spread like wildfire. However, your vison/campaign can also be inoculated against (competing visions become more compelling), or simply lose their life force.

The Life Cycle has five stages:
Consciousness Creating – the vision is created.
Consciousness Raising – the vision is raising awareness and chaining out.
Consciousness Sustaining – the vision is kept alive and must defend against competing visions.
Decline – the ‘old’ vision is being replaced by another ‘vision’ (think diffusions of innovations)
Death – the old vision dies and has no currency in the symbolic marketplace.

While all rhetorical visions go through these stages naturally, the timelines and accelerated or slowed down through a few examples:
Artistry – to what extent are the story tellers continuing to hold the attention of (and inspire) the cue-givers and the masses.
Here & Now – the vision is always in competition with other visions, to what extent can the keepers of the vision ground the drama in the here-and-now reality of its participants.
Inoculation – protect from competition, protect the core idea (the seeds of a rhetorical vision’s destruction are sewn in its genesis story).
Novelty & Redundancy – related to inoculation and the here-and-now phenomena, to what extent is the vision reaffirming and refreshing.

Position Structure
While people may participate in the same vision, they may get there for different reasons. As stated in an earlier post on this blog, we live in symbolically created world -- sometimes the rhetorical visions that make up our symbolic world overlap and sometimes they don't. Our symbol systems and world views can be segmented into seven symbolic visions or dramas. This is the foundation for Symbographic research. These dramas provide a lens through which we can see the way communities, tribes, organizations, customers segment and organize. The visions are righteous, social, pragmatic, social-righteous, social-pragmatic, righteous-pragmatic, and no vision. From a brand perspective, having no vision a dangerous place to be, as the market will position you. We can see this in the recent examples of Chevy and Walmart fighting their positioning as they try to grab the youth market.

It’s imperative to understand these competing (righteous, social, pragmatic) reasons for a vision or symbolic identity’s existence. They help you frame your story and “sell” your point of view.

Post Recaps: SCT Take-aways:
To end this series of posts on Primal Branding & SCT, here are a few take-aways:
* Without a good theory, you can’t tell a fact from a not-fact – you’re blind when it comes to the explanatory and predictive nature of a community’s actions (rooted in meaning, motive, identity, and emotion).
* Brands are more than belief systems.
* Symbolic Convergence provides a meaningful way to make sense of the symbolic realities in which your customer segments participate.
* Righteous, social, and pragmatic explanations exist to justify the existence of a symbolic reality or rhetorical vision.
* Position or be positioned