Brand Manners

Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.

In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:

Does your brand have good manners?

That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.

In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’

–          Listen to others
–          Have patience
–          Wait your turn to talk
–          Never interrupt
–          Ask for permission
–          Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
–          Be honest, truthful and pure
–          Be punctual
–          Be tidy
–          Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
–          Keep out of bad company
–          Be kind to those around you
–          Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
–          Don’t cheat
–          Be polite at all times

Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.

You can download the PDF here: goodmanners

And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.

Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.

4 thoughts on “Brand Manners

  1. Great post…isn’t it amazing how frequently we go back to the future! Adds even more strength to the argument that there is no such thing as original thought – just execution! Nice to see, and we always speak to our clients (especially the leadership brand clients) about these behaviors!

  2. So, so true… I remember witnessing exactly the point you make from my work with the corporate world. I worked in services firm with a really great guy as my boss. And because he was just a good bloke who followed the principles you outline above, he won heaps of work without spending hours pitching for it. On the flip side, we had heaps of other business heads who spent hours and hours wining and dining prospective clients and had an extremely poor hit rate. Just goes to show that success comes when people like who you are and what you stand for.

  3. This is realy interesting! How beautiful things would be if all marketing becomes permission based and no there is no irrelevant noise. opt-in emails, sms marketing etc would thrive because messages would be heard more by prospects.

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