Your Brand Has a Courage Problem
I'm not an especially patriotic person.
I don't own an American flag. I don’t tear up whenever I hear the national anthem. And I’m certainly not someone who keeps a folding chair in the trunk of my car, just in case a parade breaks out.
My patriotism becomes even harder to summon when sports are involved.
I’ve never watched an international sporting event thinking, My country’s honor is at stake. The whole thing always feels a little theatrical to me. Dream Teams, chest-thumping pride, and of course, the performative chant of “USA! USA!
I prefer rooting for underdogs wherever they live, and am helpless against people who enjoy being themselves.
So naturally, during this year's World Cup, Norway won me over.
Their supporters weren’t doing what sports fans usually do. Boasting. Bragging. Trash-talking their opponents.
They were rowing.
Thousands of people, sitting shoulder to shoulder, pretending to power an invisible Viking ship.
They did it in the stands. Outside the stadium. In Times Square. At baseball games. On tour busses, ferries and subways.
Everywhere they went, they rowed.
It was ridiculous.
It was funny.
It was unmistakably theirs.
And somewhere between the strokes and the laughter my brain did what brains do. It made a judgement and came to a conclusion.
Norwegians are fun.
I haven't met many Norwegians and know very little about Norway. But my mind has now written a story about the people of that country.
That’s how reputations are built. How perceptions are built. How brands are built.
Not through slogans or advertising campaigns, but through repeated moments that feel true. Authentic. Genuine. Honest.
Those qualities sound effortless. They aren’t.
Because the moment people know they’re being watched, the temptation is to perform instead of simply be.
Authenticity becomes something organizations try to engineer instead of something they’re willing to reveal. The trouble is, revealing who you are requires courage. And courage is often in short supply.
Spend a little time looking through corporate websites and you begin to notice how alike they all sound. Everyone promises innovation. Everyone is trusted. Everyone puts people first. Everyone is customer-centric. Apparently, they all attended the same branding workshop sometime around 2011.
The language is meant to make them sound distinctive, when the truth is, it has the opposite effect. They’re so afraid of saying something no one else would say that they end up saying exactly what everyone else says.
They choose the safest place to stand and end up in the easiest place to overlook.
Norway’s fans were not trying to look different. That is what made them different. They were not performing a brand. They were expressing a personality.
There is a profound difference between the two. One is carefully manufactured. The other is simply allowed.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if an organization stopped asking, “What should our brand be?”
And started asking, “What part of ourselves have we been too afraid to show?”
I don’t know many organizations willing to ask that question.
Big organizations, especially, become prisoners of their own reputations. Every message is reviewed. Every joke is softened. Every rough edge is polished away. Somewhere along the way, authenticity begins to feel irresponsible and dangerous.
Eventually, “who they are” becomes perfectly safe. And perfectly forgettable.
The Norwegians offered a masterclass in branding without ever meaning to.
They didn’t build a campaign. They didn’t craft a message. They didn’t workshop a positioning statement or write a manifesto.
They just kept rowing.
In the stands. Outside the stadium. In Times Square. At baseball games. On tour buses, ferries, and subways.
Everywhere they went, they gave people the same honest glimpse of who they were.
That’s how I came away believing something about an entire country after watching a few thousand soccer fans. And that’s how the strongest brands are built.
Not by deciding what people should think.
But by giving them something genuine to remember.
And love.
Go Norway!