Brand Charismatic Enchantment
Today’s design should be about charisma. Brands are alive and have souls, which is what makes people connect and engage with them.
Charisma is enchantment that can inspire devotion in others. Charisma has the power to make super brands.
Brands are a collection of objects that need to have charismatic souls—they are more than the objects they sell.
In 16 years, Supreme became a $1b brand. You put the logo on a brick, an Oreo, an LV suitcase… and it creates a symbiosis where that object reveals itself. In the case of Supreme its charisma is “rebellious absurdity”; a key chain with testicles, an axe, brick and beyond.
As for Apple and Nike, their brand charisma brings to life their brand purpose, vision and mission. It’s the charisma that activates these brand deliverables as well as their vision, passion, mission, values and purpose.
Google had it when they believed in ‘Don’t be evil’, until they dropped it. Think about it, way back when you used Google you were a good guy against evil. Now they are a wonderful digital utility company like Microsoft. If something better comes along we’ll switch and won’t miss or care about them.
Charisma is enchantment that can inspire devotion in others. Charisma has the power to make super brands.
An active ingredient
Charisma is personal warmth. If we believe brands are becoming more like a collective of people, what kind of people are they? I believe brands are like parents who passed down a system of values to people.
We need to design for a brand’s ownable value that must be shared between them and the people: only Apple owns creativity; only Nike owns inspirational performance; only Amazon owns extraordinary convenience. And what do they all have in common? Brand charisma. Nike takes it from their athletes. Amazon gets it from Bezos. Apple got it from Steve Jobs.
When they have that, they can create meaningful and experiential stories. Disney just created a Star Wars hotel experience that is an immersive storytelling experience. Another great example of impactful branding is the film Ford vs. Ferrari (James Mangold, 2019). People experienced the film for 2 hours, the brands earned attention, and we got into these charismatic cars. That’s something more impactful than any advertising campaign about their brand.
Brand charisma is what enchants brand meaning. It’s an active ingredient in the process.
If we believe brands are becoming more like a collective of people, what kind of people are they?
Charisma attracts
I also believe brand design’s next frontier should embrace not only the visual, but physical and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality environments by designing for brandscapes and branded worlds.
Think about most brand identities today as a renaissance painting. We stand in front of the painting experience. Cubism painting broke that spectator relationship where you have to move around the painting. It brings both mind and body into the art experience.
Therefore brands need to design for the brand experience powered by their brand identity. One thing that quantum physics scientists all agree on is that reality only occurs through an interaction.
We need to start from designing a brand’s charismatic essence as the foundation for everything else, because people live brands.
In the end, when two people meet it’s the enchanting charisma that attracts them together. And I believe it’s the same for brand design, where the power of charismatic enchantment seals the deal for people to choose the brand.
We need to start from designing a brand’s charismatic essence as the foundation for everything else, because people live brands.
We need to start from designing a brand’s charismatic essence as the foundation for everything else, because people live brands.
Charismatic enchantment creates living brand systems with noticing power, staying power and cultural relevance!
Design is charismatic enchantment.
Words: Peter Lau, Mucho’s Director of Brand Innovation.
Illustrations: @lenka.re
