The Psychology of Quality and More

Be

The Tao of Branding by David Straker -- Part 2

Start - Be - Sense - Harmonise - Lead - References

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Jeffery Pfeffer has complained about the knowing-doing gap, and there is a gap beyond this: the doing-being gap. We fill our lives with doing and think we have found success. Stopping the rush into action and just being is seen as waste, yet Csikszentmihalyi’s experiments in ‘flow’ have shown that when we lose our sense of self, we paradoxically come back a happier person. Jung, too, knew the importance of letting go when he said, “Learn all you can about symbolism, then forget it all when you are analyzing a dream.” Psychologists have rediscovered what has been known for centuries: the first step is to let go and just be.

Tao is

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name

-- Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu

The Tao is. It exists. It can be known, but it cannot be named. If you grasp at it, like a shadow it is not there and all you feel is the pressure of your own grasp. And yet it can be sensed. Like Alexander’s ‘Quality without a Name’, it is always there but can never be adequately described.

Tai Chi centering

When performing, you should be centered, balanced, stable and comfortable.

-- Treatise of Master Wu Yu-hsiang, in Tai Chi Classics, by Waysun Liao

What is noticeable about a Tai Chi master is the deep stillness that he or she has. Before you start Tai Chi movements, you stop and still yourself. In that moment of being, you become centred and whole. Centring creates the structural integrity from which all effortless power flows. Throughout all moving, the Tai Chi master remains centred.

Brand presence

Brands that know how to be, have presence. They can stand alone and still, without clutter. They have an indefinable, yet instantly recognizable, quality. You know them without having to try.

Presence is naked essence. To find the essence of a brand, peel away words and images and preconceptions until there is nothing left but the core. Let it be. Know it, but do not try to name it: to do so would be a pointless distraction.

Google.com is a near-naked brand with clear presence. It has a minimal interface yet a clear and friendly character that does what you need with the minimum of fuss or intrusion.

Generic brands have no presence, no essence. Their core is cheap and stolen at best and hence vacant and not.

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