The Misconception of Brands
I want to talk through a story about a guy who used to talk shit about brands. How brands are all made up, and they’re just labels that are put on these products to make the ignorant, the stupid, the incoherent believe that what they’re buying is some sort of great thing. But what this guy happens to miss with that worldview is actually his ignorance, his inability to understand what a brand really is.
What is a Brand?
I’m going to explain what a brand is and why brands that are brands, real brands, are the reason that when you buy something that is branded, you are literally buying the brand; you’re not buying anything other than the brand. You are not buying a product but a brand. So that begs the question, what is a brand? What exactly makes a brand if it’s a brand and it’s not the product?
The Difference Between a Product and a Brand
Let’s start by explaining the inverse of that: why a product in and of itself is not a brand. A product in and of itself is not a brand because a product is replicable. It’s what we in economic terms call fungible. It’s commoditized. One of it is the same as every other of it.
The example I’ll give you is money. A dollar is a dollar; there’s no such thing as a branded dollar. But, in some ways, the brand of the USA is what makes the dollar a “dollar”. See how everything is a brand in some way?
But let’s stick to the fungibility for a second.
Let me give you an even simpler example of something that is a product and is fungible. Gold. Gold is gold. Whether you go to India, to Dubai, to London, or to New York.
The Power of Branding
But, what if the gold happened to be 18-carat Tiffany’s? That changes things, doesn’t it? Because 18-carat Tiffany’s is exponentially more valuable than a bar of gold. In this case, gold is not gold. Tiffany’s makes the gold more valuable. he brand. Tiffany’s and countless other brands like it are, in fact, what differentiate brands and products. Products are everywhere. You do not want to be in the business of selling a product. You do want to be in business as as brand.
Creating a Brand
So the next phase, how do you create a brand? What do you do? What makes something a brand? That is the essence of what life is. Life is a brand. The brand is the result in the current time of the narrative of a product. Okay, so what does that mean?
Think about yourself for a second. What is a personal brand? A personal brand, the ones that scale, the ones that really have value, is the current end result of who you were in life, up to this point, and what you project to be going forward based on who you are up to this point. So if you’re posting just some videos and shaking your body, it’s not really a brand. Maybe for OnlyFans it is, but more likely than not. Shaking your ass commoditized.
The Value of a Personal Brand
But if you’re Tony Robbins and you have a life and a story and a history, and you grew up poor, single mom, pulled yourself out of the gutter, and now are one of the most influential people to everyone from Bill Clinton to Michael Jordan because of how special you are, because of how you articulate that story, because of how you built a business around that story, well, then you’re a brand. Tony Robbins is a brand.
8 billion people. Most of which are somewhat fungible and commoditized- one Tony Robbins, and that’s literally the same thing for product brands. When someone says to me that an Hermès’s purse is just an Hermès purse, I look at them. I look at them and I go, “you’re an idiot”.
When you buy an Birken Bag, you’re buying 200 years of history. You’re buying the narrative of that company. You’re buying the prestige, not the dream of some narrative of wanting to be rich, but the dream of being that person that you want to be, and that is worth a premium.
Just like Tony Robbins is worth a premium. Because that story is built into that Hermès bag that you pick up in New York City on Madison Avenue and drop ten, twenty, thirty, fifty thousand dollars on. It’s that story of Hermès you’re buying.
The Emotional Connection to Brands
But here’s a super cool thing. You’re that story, the fact that you were able to buy that Hermès bag, the fact that you walked in. The coolest thing about brands and the reason they’re worth so much is that they’re not only building in the narrative of the actual brand, they’re building in your own narrative, which is by far the most important narrative in the world.
Think of the steps that you had to take to get to buy that Hermès bag, and that’s the power of the brand. It’s not just the brand’s story; it’s the twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of your story, which is coupled with the fifty to a hundred years of your family’s story, which is coupled with the five to ten to twenty billion years of your history. So when someone is buying a Rolex, a Bentley, a Tiffany’s ring, or an Hermès bag, or even a diamond engagement ring, it’s not the brand that other person created. But it’s the fact that you were now able to buy that brand. Whatever that means to you. It doesn’t mean that buying that brand means you’re rich or you’ve made it. It’s not even about being bourgeois. It’s about being you. Whatever brand resonates with you.
The Universality of Brands
I have brands in my house right now that that I can purchase for 1/10th of the price that I pay for them. Turmeric for example. I pay over $10 for a bottle of turmeric that I can get for $1. But I buy this turmeric because the story of the founder resonates with me. It’s made by an Indian female that goes all the way to India and works directly with local farmers to source the turmeric.
I connect with that. As and Indian male, born in India, raised in America, her story is my story. I get her story. And that story worth exponentially more than the turmeric I purchase.
I pay the premium for her story which is my story which is our collective story of humanity.
Anyone who tells you that brands are useless, that they’re commoditized, that they’re bullshit, is, in and of themselves, projecting what they are.
Whatever that is, it is.
But brands are a part of humanity because they are humanity.
All of us, everything is a brand.