Of logos and belief systems
AGKSPEAK
| Every day of every week I scour the newspapers and the outdoor and the TV, my eyes and ears tuned to pick out simple ads. I am almost never lucky. |
| But once in a great big while, a simple little gem comes along. And there it is "" like a dart seated surely in the centre of a bull's-eye! |
| My choice for this fortnight is the Kotex ad. Not one complicated thought. No layers. No hidden meanings. No 'jokes' for insiders. Just a simple visual depicting 24 hours in a day "" for double the protection. |
| This is how a little child would look at it. It has that kind of breathtaking straightness. It is truly wonderful when you come across an adult who has managed to shed the baggage of 'learning'. |
| And knows how to come straight to the point. And believe me, it is not often that you come across such non-complex thinkers. As Bill Bernbach puts it, " I wouldn't hesitate for a second to choose the plain looking ad that is alive and vital and meaningful, over the ad that is beautiful but dumb". |
| So at the risk of repetition I state it again, in the sea of the work before me, of which most are quite artfully done, this simple little piece manages to shine through. |
| What I've learned. Logos have no dreams Can an organisation or an institution have dreams? All my career I held on to the belief that if you build an organisation, you are building a dream not just for yourself, but for generations of like-minded people. |
| Today, I know otherwise. Be it a political party, an educational institution or a corporation "" take the person in charge out of the place and the entire set-up acquires a whole new personality! Good or bad, time will tell, but the change is instant and divorces the place so completely from its former avatar, that it is beyond recognition. |
| So what's the secret behind keeping an institution's identity on a steady and even keel, maintaining the same set of values and beliefs over time? In other words, how do you build to last? |
| I looked at some of the longest standing institutions that have changed over time, but yet have done so, with grace and dignity. I found my answer in... Religion. Religions, if you observe, have learned a) to manage change, and, b) to keep the 'Personalities' out of the 'Philosophy'. You don't go to the temple one day and discover a whole new religion just because a new pujari has come in! And yet you see it all over the place "" company fortunes swing wildly with exiting and incoming CEOs, CFOs and the like. The company you dealt with one day, suddenly doesn't exist anymore "" true, the address is the same, the signage is the same, but the soul strangely, isn't! |
| One strong common feature that religions seem to share is the inculcation of 'rituals', or, 'practices' or 'a way of doing things'. |
| Walk into any temple or church or mosque anywhere in the world and the minute the rituals begin, you are at home "" the pujari is inconsequential "" he is just there as a facilitator between you and your belief system. |
| So if I have to build an institution all over again this is what I would focus on "" the building of processes, because I realise, rather late in the day, that the foundation of a place lies not in brick and mortar, or even in a balance sheet, but rather, in time-tested processes and its way of doing things. |
| I would work towards institutionalising 'the method'. An institution or a person attracts like-minded people because of the 'way of doing things' and this, therefore, has to be protected and preserved, if you want the organisation to survive over time. Because, what is the worth of a logo or a symbol if it no longer communicates the same belief systems for which it was created? |
| agkbrandconsult@yahoo.com |