· by James Archer · 2 min read
Brand Identity Insights from...Milwaukee?
Brands live in minds, not infrastructure. Sell your true vibe, not generic “quality.” Lean into what you are—authentic culture beats wishful rebrands and earns loyalty faster than polished spin.
In a recent editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, author and speaker Richard Thieme made some very insightful comments into the recent efforts by the “Milwaukee 7” to rebrand Milwaukee into something sexier and more desirable than its current public reputation.
His comments are right on target, and do a great job of explaining our own approach to identity and branding. Specifically, your identity should reflect and magnify who you are, not who you wish people thought you were.
Quoting from Thieme’s editorial:
By emphasizing underlying economic conditions, the M-7 is doing what we might expect a conservative culture to do - focus on the infrastructure.
But a brand is a perception, a belief, an image. It lives in the mind. A brand doesn’t just happen - it must be created and sustained.
The infrastructure must exist, but the brand does not sell the infrastructure. It presumes it. The infrastructure is only noticed, like a pothole or broken main, when something goes wrong.
This is precisely what happens to companies who get too involved in promoting empty basics like “quality” and “customer service” instead of real identity attributes.
Some companies take this so far that they begin promoting their weaknesses. When you see a major ad campaign about customer service, diversity, etc., you can usually bet that someone got sued, or a bad report came out, etc.
Thieme continues:
We should be selling our brand under the banner of gemuetlichkeit, fellowship in beer halls, robust eating, bikers riding loud into the sunset, summer festivals and winter dreams. We should be selling the party of life. Tech-savvy people, the ones we say we want, love those things. They don’t move to a place for its banks, insurance companies or financial services.
It’s easier to ride a horse in the direction it’s going. When Las Vegas stopped pretending to be a family destination and returned to its roots (“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”), it took off like a rocket.
Amen to that. Nobody likes the guy at the party who’s trying to impress everyone. Be cool and be yourself. That’s what corporate identity is all about.
