The world is changing. We are rapidly evolving away from a marketplace ruled by mass culture, to one filled with a riotous patchwork of specific niches. Not long ago, one-size-fits-all communications, branding, and products stood at the top of the heap. Whether it was the Big Three TV networks, Top 40 Radio, or products designed for the Average Jane, traditional marketing and branding sought the widest spread and the largest customer base. But in 2014, these bastions of lowest common denominator thinking are slowly crumbling, thanks to the increasing fragmentation of media, culture, and interests. And these fragments — whether you call them tribes, micro-communities, or niches — have powerful potential for organizations, brands, and marketers.

The Internet has driven much of this change, providing a forum and technology for people to discuss, exchange, and rally around their favorite products, services, or interests. DVRs, shrinking electronics, and personalization search algorithms have also kneecapped the effectiveness of broad-based marketing and advertising. But while this scenario is challenging for those who still pursue the target audience of “anyone with a heartbeat,” there are opportunities out in the margins of the marketplace for savvy, passionate people and their organizations.

Niches have grown in and among the weeds of our culture, often centered around demographics, causes, shared interests, or the love of a product or service. Many of them present amazing opportunities for brands and marketers to tap into existing passion, or to create goods and services that people will respond to with zeal.

Good business is where you find it, and niches have potential value for marketers or organizations who find a fit, and are able to engage a micro-community — by opening new markets, co-creating ideas together, tapping “experts” for ideas or consultation, or engaging tribes as part of larger brand strategies. The number of opportunities is staggering, with the potential to birth small companies that reach even smaller audiences, to disrupting existing markets, creating new industries, or just reaching those with particular hairstyles.

After combing through the underbrush of culture and online forums, your team might see marketing potential in already-gathered tribes, but it’s not quite a point and shoot process. Niches are like bad science projects — they have the potential for great energy output and passion, but they also are very combustible. It doesn’t take much for a tribe to implode, disband, or destroy itself from within. It takes an astute traveler to navigate these ecosystems, all of which have their own rules, customs, and languages. Every micro-community is different, and require different approaches, methods, and tactics. You wouldn’t speak Klingon to a sabermathematician, but there are some general principles to consider when venturing into niches. Here are our necessary signposts to read along the way:

1. The passion of the few is better than the “meh” of the many.
If the success of the overall Kickstarter model tells us anything, it’s that you don’t need many enthusiastic “backers” to turn a product or service into a success. But in many cases, these supporters are not mere customers — they’re invested in the process of creation and development. They aren’t just consumers, but devotees — serious and excited enough about a publication, product, or film to take action before the actual work is completed. This turns the traditional consumer-supplier relationship on its head, and it works, because people care about the end result. That caring is potentially powerful, and when gathered into a small tribe or group, this zeal can easily outweigh a much larger audience of people who could take it or leave it.

2. For best results, fully immerse.
Once you determine what niche you want to explore, supply, (or exploit), you’ll need to embed yourself in the fabric of that chosen tribe. Become a real part of the culture — observe, listen, and finally, contribute. It takes time to build trust, understanding, and personal connections. Opportunistic carpetbaggers and phonies will be ferreted out, as authenticity is often the main coin of the realm where niches are concerned. Whether it’s among Wizard of Oz fans or Intellivision geeks, establishing yourself as credible is key to becoming part of a community. Also, truly understanding a niche leads to deeper insights, rather than knee-jerk solutions.

3. Real passion is required.
There’s nothing wrong with making money, but viewing niche communities purely as cash cows or “exploitable markets” misses the point. Often, these communities spring up and exist because of true brand love — maybe it’s for classic video games or unusual documentary work, and it’s that same passion that sustains them.

Surely there are opportunities for investors, organizations, and brands seeking to embed themselves within these niches for their own good, but genuine love for the subject matter or community has to be woven into any effort. Whether you’re building a product to reach fans of 3D photography or designing an app for creatives, truly authentic efforts will win the day. This requires your team to actually join the fray, or partner with those on the inside. This is both good business and ethical action — so it’s in your organization’s best interests to either go native and become one of your customers, or hire them.

4. Ask not what your niche can do for you.
With apologies to JFK, it’s important to enter a sector or tribe with a servant’s mindset. What needs do you see? How can you (or your organization) become inherently valuable to the residents of this subculture? Where do your offerings and their needs intersect? Engaging fans (and people) at this level removes some of the opportunistic stench from your efforts and disarms those who are skeptical of your intentions. It’s important to be transparent and honest about your desires, but it’s also just good form to pitch in and help before you ask for something in return.

5. Can you shrink?
Once you’ve chosen a community to focus on, and a way to engage with them, practical considerations crop up. Can your team streamline itself enough to handle a smaller, leaner business model that serves less people, but does so more intensely? Is it possible to narrow your offerings and still be profitable? These scaled-down strategies are not for everyone, but they are often crucial in effective efforts to reach overlooked niches. Mattel became an intriguing example of this when it morphed some of its less-profitable mass retail toy lines into collector-focused, subscription based offerings. Prices might be higher for collectors, and margins might be slimmer, but the brand is carving profit out of a long tail of desire by tapping into an intense fan community. It might require more personal touch and effort, but strategies like this make sense for many organizations.

6. Take the long view.
Truly embedding into niche cultures for business reasons isn’t an overnight endeavor. Just like constructing a building’s solid foundation, it’s important to build, grow, and contribute in a way that is measured, authentic, and stable. Like any good relationship, your organization’s connection to a micro-community will take time to germinate, but if the audience is responsive and positive, great things can happen. Some amazing organizations have grown out of brands’ efforts to satisfy and delight a niche audience. And often times, today’s niches become tomorrow’s mainstream.

Occasionally we’re asked to partner with organizations who are looking to revive an old brand, resuscitate a product, or reclaim dormant intellectual property. Sometimes it’s for a brand new venture, or it’s a company rummaging through its archives for untapped assets. These behaviors can make a lot of sense, because typically, someone else has already put money, time, and effort into making that brand a recognizable one. The math seems deceptively easy: on paper it looks simpler to breathe life into an older brand than starting with a blank canvas. Some firms have even built their business models around reviving these castoffs. But it’s not always that easy.

The discard pile can be treasure or trash, and picking from this mixed bag comes with a set of concerns that shiny, newly-minted organizations don’t have to contend with. There are potential pitfalls a-plenty, but with a combination of well-deployed legacy and fresh direction, reviving an old brand can become a worthwhile endeavor.

Here are 10 thoughts for anyone who aims to reclaim an aging brand and reconfigure it for today’s world. These nuggets might be the difference between dumpster diving and panning for gold.

1: What drives you to drive the brand? There are many motives for reviving a dormant brand, and most of them revolve around the possibility of good ROI. This is business after all, but like Billy Joel said, you gotta have soul. If your organization merely sees that brand as intellectual property to be exploited, or are looking to squeeze the last drops of blood out of it, you might think twice. Better to bring it back to life because there is something within worth saving — passion or ideas worth mining. Is there an untapped promise or potential in that comatose brand? How does it relate to what you want to do? If you can successfully coax out that unique spark and marshal it on your behalf, the profit will eventually follow.

2: Assess your assets. Where are the valuables stored, and what exactly is your team getting when inheriting this brand? What bits of value does this brand still have? A recognizable logo? Memorable colors? Taglines or famous catchphrases? Or maybe it’s a loose association or connection to a cultural ethos? In this stage of the process, it’s important to dig deep and do the necessary research to understand what’s still valuable. Are the strengths transferable? Sometimes it’s the subtleties and nuances — echos of a brand’s mark in the world — that can hold the most lasting value.

3: Standing for something. Whether it’s today or tomorrow, you need to ascertain the foundation — what does the brand stand for? At its apex, what intangibles and meaning did it contain? Can it represent those same things today, or does it need to embrace a new spectrum of symbolism to survive (and thrive) in the current marketplace?

4: What do all the people know? Where public-facing brands are concerned, it’s all about the audience. You might see something redeeming in that sleepy brand of coffee or stereo manufacturer’s name, but what do people out in the world think about your new treasure? How do they relate to the brand today? Good research will be able to help uncover the current feelings and associations the brand has among the people who matter.

5: Find your fan base. Do niches and segments of brand lovers still exist? One of the biggest benefits of claiming an old brand is finding the dedicated pockets of true-believers who still carry a torch for your reawakened brand. In it’s absence, they wrote, created, argued, and reminisced about the products, services, or benefits your brand once offered. Can you tap into those fans? Will those sparks turn into a towering inferno as you help mobilize these self-made evangelists?

These die-hards can be your best friends or your worst enemies, depending on how you play your hand. While they might be devoted to the name or cause, they will be a major headache to your team if you can’t live up to the legacy of the original name (at least as they might see it). Sometimes re-engaging with a brand’s devotees can be more arduous than building a brand new audience. Zealots come in all flavors — choruses of angels or a busloads of devils.

6: Has time healed all wounds? Sometimes history is kind, and the rough edges or missteps of organizations get lost to time. But in other situations, one single act can turn a company name into a hated buzzword. Have the years been kind to your brand? What timely facets and associations have evaporated? History can be a helpful benchmark for what is still valuable — because sometimes cream rises to the top. What has stood the test of time? Those might be the brand assets worth preserving.

7: Evolution or death! Like sharks, stagnant brands die, regardless of how old they are. Remember that all brands need to grow and evolve, and if your brand isn’t moving forward, adapting, and morphing to fit the needs of the culture and marketplace, it’s heading backwards. And that’s how the brand got swept into the dustbin in the first place.

8: Show me the skeletons. While it might be cheaper to build on an existing foundation, you have to do your due diligence as well. Brands are no different. Sometimes you’re also inheriting the dirty laundry and rotten floorboards in forgotten corners of the house. Will those landmines hamstring your new efforts? It’s probably best to consider if you’re equipped to deal with the imagined worst-case scenario.

9: Grey isn’t always gold. Not all old things are worth reviving. LPs might be cool, but is anyone itching to fire up their old 8-track player? There’s a difference between momentary fashion and a brand hook that can evolve back into a sustainable business model. Sometimes that layer of dust is just irrelevancy, and the savvy marketers should be able to spot the difference through the cobwebs.

10: Have a plan. Crafting and building brands is not like investing. Stock values move on just one axis — they can go up or down. But brands are more mercurial, and require more than just capital to refresh them. These rebuilt brands need passion, vision, and strategic planning for the future in order to grow well. Forgo the passion, and brand resurrection just becomes the mechanical act of squeezing more blood from the same stone. Think brand love will win breed success alone? Unfortunately, passion isn’t a business plan.

Without a strategy for growth, development, and communication, your brand will never evolve into what it could be. Still, when it comes to reviving a brand, true love and care for the brand will shine more brightly than a holding company’s financial stake. And brand audiences can sense true passion, because it shows itself in all touchpoints for a particular service or product.

When brands are reborn, often the intangibles are the only things left. Emotions, associations, and half-remembered connections are the clay that can be molded and shaped for new purposes — those of your new endeavor. The teams who can harness those spirits and weave them into provocative brand stories are the ones who will win the day.

Some examples. The good, great, and meh:

Shinola, watches, leather goods, and bicycles all made in Detroit. Previously makers of shoe-polish.

“It would be a company steeped in the values of an older era, and the founding team wanted a name to match. ‘We didn’t want to try to invent a name that had heritage and pretend there was history behind it,’ COO Heath Carr says, so they looked for inactive brands that were on the market. They eventually came across Shinola, along with the ‘ever-so-famous saying that comes with the name,’ Carr says.”

Shinola is experiencing strong sales, great buzz, and success because they’ve zealously stuck to their brand’s plan and ethos. Their leadership team also seem to have a deep understanding of how much to accentuate or downplay certain aspects of the brand’s name and heritage for the best results. Full story by Fast Company.

Polaroid, digital and imaging products. Previously innovators and originators of instant film.

“It’s one of the famous brands, like Rolex, Nike, Coca-Cola,” Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy said. “Polaroid went through its troubles, but its asset was its brand, and now we are going through a tremendous resurgence of that brand,” he said.

While Polaroid has jettisoned much of the innovative tag that surrounded the original company, the current caretakers are being judicious about their licensing model. Their choices seem well-selected to avoid hitting any sour notes that would contradict what the brand has come to stand for. Also, they get high marks for clever transference of the brand’s personality into their physical locations. More details at TwinCities.com.

Atari, pioneers of home video games and coin-operated arcade games with a meteoric rise in the 1980s. Today, current rights owners are struggling to escape bankruptcy and reform.

“To many of us, the name Atari represents the birth of the video game industry, both in the arcades and at home—which, coincidentally, were also two separate Atari businesses. Either way, the name is synonymous with video games.”

Sadly, the Atari brand is a mere shadow of what it once was under its original banner. The most recent incarnation’s leadership realized too late that merely recycling its popular properties wouldn’t be enough to sustain it as an organization. But their pre-bankruptcy move into smartphone games and apps was a promising step. The jury is still out. More at PCMag.

Indian Motorcyles, one-time competitors to Harley-Davidson, original company closed in the 1950s.

“It’s a phenomenal American story with an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Steve Menneto, Vice President of Motorcycles at Polaris. “We wanted to bring that forward and blend it into what we’re doing with the brand. We want to show riders what we learned from Indian’s history.”

An interesting brand that has a small-but-passionate audience, Indian is still young. But its focus on engineering takes a page from what the original company was known for, and fundamental focus on innovation rarely goes out of style. Whether this will be enough to make a sizable dent in the market versus Harley-Davidson remains to be seen. More at Fox Business.

The glowing age of celebrity endorsements is fading. Sure, large corporations still hand out millions to basketball players and pop stars to attach themselves to some level of current “cool,” but no savvy audience truly believes this is anything less than a financial transaction — a paid endorsement, dollars for smiles. Insert cash, and a celebrity will say whatever you like. But is this good or bad for your brand?

Other smart people are correctly predicting that we’re nearing the end of the era where advertising is a driving brand force of large organizations. And that has advertisers concerned — a concern that leads to desperation. In a move designed to repackage the tired old “paid celebrity endorsement” for today’s cynical audiences, the latest spin is to hand out creative titles to celebrities, in order to show how they’re influencing a brand’s offerings.

Alicia Keys is BlackBerry’s Global Creative Director (who also uses an iPhone). Lady Gaga is “fairly involved” as a Creative Director at Polaroid, actually attending meetings, brainstorming, and providing feedback on products! Newly-minted Bud Light Platinum Creative Director Justin Timberlake apparently produces and stars in his own commercial work for the beer giant. Now that’s called “creative direction?” Color me skeptical.

While I have plenty of respect for what each of these musicians does behind the mic, this leads one to wonder how much talent crossover there is between pop stardom and branding and marketing. Should designers, creative directors, and product engineers be worried about our jobs? I doubt it.

The people who should be concerned are the stewards of these brands. What are these celebrities doing to their most valuable asset, the brand image? The potential negative impact is more far-reaching and brand-critical than it might seem on the surface.

Your brand is a constellation of products, thoughts, emotions, and ideas — some generated by the actions, offerings, and communication of your brand, and others created in the minds of your audience. The classic thinking behind celebrity endorsement is this: Brand X wants to raise its stature or reach a new demographic, and so, hitches its wagon to a star. Ideally, Celebrity X has a cultural orbit somewhat closely matching Brand X, and now that the two are aligned, new light from that star shines afresh on the product or brand.

But does that work? Many times the whole thing backfires, and companies find themselves distancing their brand from cheating golfers or cocaine snorting supermodels. Sure, celebrities shine brightly for a time, and when they are allied with your brand, they can bring a new set of orbiting loves, attributes, and audiences into your universe. But I’d make the case that drafting off another “star body” is harmful in the long term, because it muddies the overall brand message, draws attention away from more immutable brand attributes, and dampens the passion and communications that spring forth from a healthy brand. Here are three major reasons why enlisting a celebrity “creative director” is a mistake for many brands and organizations:

1: Creating Is Your Job, Not Theirs

Marketing, product creation and development — these must be done by the people who are intimately familiar with the brand, those who care about it, inside the organization. Those who are part of a brand or tasked with its communication have a stronger vested interest in success than a (famous) hired hand who has no long-term attachment to the parent brand. (And this is not a slight against outside agencies or firms — after all, we are one of them. In typical situations, consultants are hired for their skill and track record in partnering with brands, whereas celebrities are hired chiefly for their fame. It’s hardly the same thing.)

Bringing celebrities in to get their feedback and input also sends counterproductive messages to your brand’s workaday teams — that their contributions are not as valuable, and can be overlooked or overruled in the name of fashion and fame. This isn’t good for your internal and contracted teams, or the long-term health of your creative folks, who are a major engine that fires your brand.

2: Your Message Is Not Their Message

In 2013, celebrities are their own brands, and they stand for their own set of personal values — beliefs, ways of creating, political or cultural leanings, etc. Each tweet or press release is calculated to provide maximum exposure and appropriate alliances, for that person. For a celebrity who trades on their name and likeness, this is the endgame. It makes sense. And while there might be some temporary overlap with your brand, if these famous faces are savvy, their eyes are still fixed on the long term, and their own overall branding. This requires them to remain loyal only to themselves, and guarantees that they will continue transmitting their own brand messages. Whatever paid endorsement you’ve agreed upon (your brand message) is just subtext to the celebrity’s larger, personal brand messaging. Your own communications get muted and muddled, because they will never be the primary message. A transmission containing many voices is invariably less powerful and evocative, and your brand’s ethos is more valuable than that.

3: Great Brands Must Power Themselves

Finally, at the heart of the celebrity endorsement premise is a fundamental flaw, because brands cannot effectively draft off the power of another body. Like a swimmer, a drafting brand requires power from somewhere else, and the “coolness” of a celebrity will only help sustain brand movement for a limited time. Celebrity attachment can’t create movement, just pass it along. It’s this unique, powerful, and singular inertia that brands need to define their personalities and carve a unique place in the universe and in the minds of audiences. Like forces of nature, great brands are powered by the will and imagination of those inside the company, to provide vision, clarity, creativity and something worthwhile to the world. This isn’t a responsibility that you can cede to a momentarily-cool celebrity.

In general, I believe that bringing out the benjamins for a celebrity is an inherently insecure brand position. It makes it seem like the brand itself isn’t special or unique enough to chart its own course, and develop its singular position. The (considerable) money needed for a celebrity endorsement or “creative partnership” is better spent developing new products, messaging, and concepts that build upon the ethos of the brand, rather than seeking a transfusion of energy or coolness from some famous person.

It should be obvious, but style is not a strategy. Instead, style is just one tool in the marketer’s arsenal, brandished to help deliver a specific result, whether it is emotional, visual, or otherwise.

Or maybe style is more like a spice or seasoning. It tastes good, adds unique and distinctive flavor, but can’t stand alone as a meal. We need the red meats of strategy and goal-oriented design to deliver the goods, without being tricked into the idea that style can solve a problem on its own. In our lightning-fast culture, the speed of trends is increasing, and marketers, designers, and artists are often at risk of getting “over trended.”

Ephemeral trends and visual styles are at the highest levels — they’re the waves crashing and moving quickly over the top of the water, while the still waters of good design and communication ripple underneath. Great design and branding is knowing when to ride the crests, and when it’s best to dive deep.

I think he’s right on, but there’s more to the story. Brands aren’t solely formed of audience belief or market opportunities. They are the creation of driven, hard-working, vision-casting individuals who put bits of themselves into their organizations, whether it’s their passions, perspective, or merely sweat equity. To completely cede the soul or mission of a brand to the opinions of others means leaving out an essential slice of the organization’s DNA.

We believe that the sweet spot of powerful, authentic brand identity (and communication) lies at the intersection of an organization’s view of itself (the Authorial element) and the connection the brand makes with those in the world (the Responsive element). When a team or organization can weave a brand story and overall identity that integrates both of these elements, it has achieved the sweet spot, a place of lasting connection and success.

The brand identity of your organization is at the heart of all communications with the outside world. It’s an identifier, a signature, a symbol loaded with meaning that flows from the brand itself, and most importantly, from people’s experiences with that brand. Crafting great brand identities is our main focus at Hexanine, and we believe it’s vastly important in business, culture, and the world around us.

However, in the arms race that is today’s business landscape, it can be tempting for those of us in branding and marketing to take shortcuts by looking to the latest in trends, “secret” strategies, or so-called silver bullets to make our brands stand out. It’s so easy to succumb to the latest brand bandwagons or popular approaches, but for good brands, this isn’t necessary. A simple storytelling approach will work powerfully. But what story to tell? How do you create these elusive brand narratives?

The irony is that great organizations are often sitting on gold mines without even realizing it.  Fabulous, valuable riches are at your fingertips — unique drivers, compelling histories, and singular stories waiting to be told. Often, these critical assets are easy to miss because they’re far too familiar, or they’re the buried treasure locked away in some lost closet of organizational knowledge. To recognize the riches your brand already has sometimes only requires re-adjusting your viewpoint, or taking on an outsider’s perspective. We love to play the outsider role, and combine it with the insider knowledge and expertise of those inside organizations. But the groundwork can be so much fun, and deeply rewarding as well. For all of the strategy and identity work we do with client partners, the first steps involve an archaeological dig of sorts, to mine and uncover what brand stories are waiting to be found.

Once a project sets sail, there’s a lot to be done before we ever arrive at the conceptual or strategy-writing phases. Rather than wastefully starting from scratch, we’ll often begin instead by assessing what stories a company or organization already has that are of value — both in the minds of leadership, and in the audiences a brand touches. Our chief roles as strategic brand designers involve excavation, curation, and storytelling — digging deep to find these nuggets of stories, evaluating them for use, and then weaving them into powerful, relevant brand communications.

Good stories are at the heart of every great brand, whether these are explicit and product-centered, or aspirational and loosely connected. Some are association-based, tying themselves to positive experiences and memories. Coke has essentially been evolving this message for decades: “Drinking Coca-Cola is a refreshing, essential part of whatever fun you’re having!” Other brand stories seek to connect to an audience’s shared values and desires, creating a stronger connection to the brand by tapping into already-active beliefs: “TOMS Shoes improves my wardrobe and style, and also lets me help kids in need.” There are many other stories to tell and billions of ways to tell them, but the tales begin with digging through the existing treasures an organization has.

The best stories and materials that emerge from the excavation become part of the creative process, serving as the raw materials we can polish up, refine, and use strategically as part of the new brand identity, messaging platform, or initiative we’re creating.

Here are some of the high-level steps and questions we ask ourselves (and our clients) as we dive deeper during this process:

Figure out what elements exist.
This is all about mining your history, digging into archives, memories, and previous work. It’s helpful to do categorical and deep dives into campaigns, efforts, internal initiatives, brand books, ads, taglines, and anything else in your archives. This cataloging process is something that many brands avoid, but it’s helpful to take stock of everything that exists before deciding what’s of value. But it’s helpful to use some of these criteria: What do people remember? What campaigns, slogans, or historical images have potential value? What are the pros and cons of those things that people remember? Can they be utilized to stir or germinate something new?

What are the stories that your organization tells itself?
How do you communicate inside the organization about what’s important? What does the organization claim as important externally, and how do those stories and values differ from what the company says in internal communication? How does your organization view itself? What lenses does it use to evaluate history, progression, and the future? Do these lenses change over time, or with shifts in leadership?

What is the organization’s “reason for being” that isn’t about making money?
Being profitable is assumed for any successful organization, but what sets yours apart? Why do people in your organization care? Why did the founders do this instead of something else? What gets your leaders up and out of bed in the morning?

What stories are others telling about your brand?
Is your company known as a great place to work? Do you have a reputation (deserved or not) for something specific? What assets or liabilities are attached to your name? What data do you collect from places like customer service, Twitter mentions, or media overviews? What trends begin to emerge? What are brand interactions like for those not drinking your company’s Kool-Aid? In the name of brutal honesty, it’s easy for these research efforts to become sensitive, because shortcomings often itch for someone to blame. But it’s important to focus on the data-gathering, not problem-solving at this point. Of course, an organization still needs to own any negatives and constructively see each as part of a larger change process for the brand — of correcting issues and moving towards better solutions. Oftentimes, giving first aid to your brand’s reputation can become a brand story in itself. Domino’s is an amazing example.

What is your organization’s culture and personality?
It can be tempting to graft in a new corporate culture or way of working, but the most powerful organizational ethos grows organically. How can you step back and observe what’s happening under your own roof? Is there something unique about your processes, or how you think about those ways of working? What stories are to be found there?

After this process is completed, these stories and many other elements flow into a brand brief, which then becomes the fertile soil for all development, whether it’s strategic, visual, or otherwise. It can seem more sexy, fresh, or interesting to start with a blank sheet of paper, but the greatest brands don’t throw away stories of value. And the best brands and marketers know that unique and authentic stories are gold for the people who see their worth. Stories are the well we all draw from, and ensuring that your company has a strong grasp on its brand stories will help guarantee success long into your future.

Innovation. Inspiration. Creativity. We toss those words around daily. Are they just fancy ways to say “I’ve had an idea?” Those of us who are marketers, designers, and artists are often labeled as creative. But what do people mean by that? There’s a widely-held (and poorly-articulated) image of the stereotypical creative person floating about in our culture. Is it Steve Jobs? Albert Einstein? Thomas Kinkade? Are creative people different than that? Can we better quantify and understand creativity?

Generally, creativity is widely discussed but poorly understood, and the “creative person” even more so. The prevailing stereotype of creative action doesn’t help matters, either. If we can better define what it means to be creative (and the disparate flavors of creativity), maybe we can better harness that creative output — whether it means assembling a team, hiring a firm, or merely understanding how to best exploit our own skills and natural tendencies.

After meeting and interacting with many creatives over the years, I’ve had to continually expand my definition of what creativity looks like. Sure, sometimes it manifests itself in the traditional way: creating something out of nothing. That lightning bolt of inspiration, or ideas from out of the blue. But other times, being creative is a slogging, noodling process that develops at a snail’s pace. This isn’t to denigrate the classical creative mold, or to lower the bar in defining what we see as creative. It just means that there are different types of creative people and methods out there. We don’t all fit into the same mold. In the same way that we now think about smarts as a set of multiple intelligences, this might be a useful lens in considering definitions of creativity.

To sow the seeds of discussion, I’ve identified five unique types of creativity, knowing full well that some people exhibit multiple facets, or bleed into different categories. Here are the each of these five initial categories. Where do you see yourself among these?

The Inventor
This is the traditional idea of creativity, pulling an idea or concept out of the ether, imagining something where there was previously nothing. Poof! This classic Edison or Da Vinci style of creativity (or its trendy cousin, “innovation,”) is what most people think of when they consider being creative. The trick to harnessing these types of people is understanding how to best deploy them. Generally, they are good at solving problems from the gut, intuiting needs that people don’t realize they have yet. But it often takes time, and the journey of imaging worlds that don’t yet exist is rarely a straight line. Set these people free on specific problems, and allow them to loosen the boundaries of what is possible.

Weaknesses: They are typically not as skilled in iterating or creating dozens of slight variations. If you’re managing or partnering with an Inventor, it’s best to focus them on the broad strokes of an issue, a problem, or an idea. Instead of burdening Inventors with working out the finest details of an idea, you might allow them to pass the finishing touches onto other team members, and move on to new problems.

Examples: Leonardo Da Vinci, Archimedes, Thomas Edison

The Craftsman
Women and men who belong in this category are more traditional artisan creators, often seen with their heads down and noses to the grindstone (sometimes literally). They whittle, paint, carve, weld, design — their output has a focus on detail, high quality, possibly bordering on perfectionism. Technology and the accessibility of creative tools has thinned this herd somewhat, but in earlier times, these were the exemplary paste-up artists, sign painters, and carpenters. It might seem like our culture has moved away from this type of creativity, but it’s alive and well in the minds of rock star programmers, silkscreen artists, and DIY moonlighters.

Weaknesses: Look at these people, and you might see them getting lost in the details, because they’ve narrowed like a laser beam on to a particular facet, issue, or detail. Sometimes that focused state can be counterproductive when no one else is providing the bigger picture. To balance out a Craftsman, make sure you have great project managers or others committed to keeping the overall project goals, deadlines, and 10,000-foot view in mind.

Examples: Ed Fella, Chris Ware

The Connector
When you look at one of these people, you might not see a traditional, inspirational creative type. There’s no genre-inventing or trendsetting happening in front of them. Instead, the Connector is someone who draws on the knowledge, styles, and thoughts of others — remixing, reworking, and building them into new things. This might be the sampling artist, the collage creator, or someone who more generally gets great results while standing on the shoulders of others. But make no mistake about it — there is a deep creativity at work here, because these people broaden our world when they provide new contexts, weld disparate ideas together, and basically make something new out of the old.

Weaknesses: Because Connectors tend to work above the typical level of idea generation, they’re often focused on creative process. This is valuable when it’s usefully repeatable, but can also become a crutch that replaces fresh thinking. To get the most from Connectors, it’s important to allow them to partner with Craftsman types or others who will keep feeding them ideas that can be combined, remixed, and revisited. Connectors are often excellent team members, and tend to thrive in those environments, helping draw more out of all other players.

Examples: Andy Warhol, Shepard Fairey

The Curator
For this type of person, the sum is often greater than the whole. With Curators, the bird’s eye view is the thing. They bring value by making creative decisions that categorize, sort, and organize by deciding what stays in the picture, or what belongs in a series. Curation is defined by assembling things and observing how the act of categorization changes their individual parts. Steve Jobs did this exceptionally well, by gathering existing technologies, concepts, and ideas– then choosing what to leave out, narrowing down to only the best designs and features he believed were necessary. Curation also provides a unique value in sizing up and contextualizing work.

Weaknesses: Because their value comes from the thoughts that tie together elements and ideas, Curators can fall into the trap of lowering their standards to fit something into a larger body of work. If they are not vigilant, it can be easy to miss the trees for the forest, and Inventors and Craftsmen need to be on hand to keep standards high.

Examples: Ken Burns, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Steven Heller

The Critic
These are the people who attempt to bring order to creations, to assess, challenge, and understand the things we’ve made as a culture. Judgment, understanding, and evaluation are arts in themselves, worthy of respect. The contributions of the Critic are completely dependant on other kinds of creators, but that doesn’t diminish the need for someone to take the time and do the difficult (and underappreciated) work of criticism. The role of critic is simultaneously growing and disappearing in our creative culture. Ease of publishing online (blogs, videos, etc.) can make anyone an instant Critic, and there is no shortage of opinions on the Internet. But opinions alone don’t birth a Critic. The true and valued Critic has extensive knowledge in a subject matter, wide view, and the ability to articulate thoughts that add wisdom and foster discourse. These creatives don’t just tell us what is good or bad, but instead, help us understand how, why, and when to make such distinctions.

Weaknesses: In an increasingly cynical world, many forms of criticism are seen as negative — just know-it-alls spouting their snooty (and often negative) opinions. Critics must work hard to avoid falling into the stereotypical destructive behavior we sometimes associate with the Critic. The true critical work is more about adding, building, and creating than it is about tearing down or ripping apart creative work. Even the word criticism has negative connotations, but Critics should be wary of turning into a fount of negativism that is the caricature of constructive, helpful criticism.

Examples: Marcia Lausen, Alice Twemlow

Again, these creative categorizations are not hard and fast definitions. Many of us exhibit multiple qualities in lesser or greater amounts, but these creations might be the most helpful for the individual person. With some self-reflection and evaluation, these roles are useful in trying to understand our own creative strengths, and how we can best work in isolation or as part of a larger team. And for those building their own creative teams — as part of a staff, internally, or in partnering with firms and individuals — it seems prudent to have a broad representation of the types on this list for a well-balanced and effective team. We’re very interested in your thoughts with these constructions, and welcome dialogue about these types of creativity.

When you talk to startups, CEOs, and others, it seems like everyone wants to be the “next Apple,” “just like Nike,” or to do things “the way Starbucks does.” Admittedly, these companies are icons and have surpassed the competition to become larger-than-life brands, symbols that stand for things both larger and more sweeping than the commerce they generate. But it’s not like any of them pushed a magic icon button to make it all happen. There’s no road map to guaranteed iconic status, or our world would be vastly different, to say the least. But if we dissect these kinds of rockstar brands, and remove the lucky breaks, the passion, sweat equity, and visionary leaders, what is left? We believe there are some fundamental activities remaining that help illuminate the roads a brand must take to becoming an icon.

Here are a few of them:

Ubiquity
You need to be everywhere your audience is. That doesn’t necessarily mean event-driven Super Bowl commercials or plastering your brand messages on every free inch of real estate. But it does require an intimate knowledge and understanding of the people you’re trying to reach, and then unobtrusively inserting your brand into their lives in useful and meaningful ways. This is less the persistent stalker syndrome and more the reliable, friendly presence. And it requires more than holding a sign that says “Remember, we’re here!” Today’s audiences want more from your brand than just a pathetic “Call me…?” Give them the means and a reason to follow you and follow up when their need arrives.

Repetition
To remain in that elusive “top-of-mind” position, it requires some sort of regular and consistent presence in the lives of your target audience. It’s up to you to determine the how and who, and which messages and means are crucial elements in your brand strategy. Repeat these in a way that doesn’t feel monotonous or self-absorbed (no one likes the people who only talk about themselves!), but slowly unfolds what you’re doing, what you’re about, and why it matters. This means that your brand’s messaging, look, feel, style, voice — all need to be consistent, working in concert to provide synergy that makes it sound like your organization speaks with one voice.

Emotional Connection
This might seem silly to a company that sells toilet brushes or distributes freight containers, but the honest truth is that nearly every purchase or product decision carries some sort of emotional weight to it, however slight. The hard part is finding out what that bit of caring is, and when it’s liable to happen to your audience. Someone might care very much about getting their morning coffee quickly, so the brand touchpoint of a fast line is crucial to evoking satisfaction. Simple, bold nutritional graphics might make a harried parent’s shopping a bit easier at the point of purchase. Audience empathy will lead to the discovery of these moments of emotional connection, allowing you to use your service, product, or offering to make a positive difference to them.

Spark
This is one of the least quantifiable aspects, but no less important in stepping up the ladder to brand stardom. What is a spark? It’s that “new and different” aspect that sets your brand apart from others. It could mean providing something that’s never been seen before (a Segway?), revamping an existing category (the iPad), or just offering a completely fresh point of view on familiar products (like Method did with cleaning supplies). The commonality in all of these is some type of “unique selling proposition” in marketing parlance, but we prefer to think of it as a brand’s soul, it’s spark, or reason for being. (And making money doesn’t count as a “reason for being.”)

Something Worth Sharing
Finally, you know you’ll have an iconic brand in-the-making when you have something people want to share with others. Sharing is a highly-overused term in our sphere of retweets, Likes, and thumbs up , but this principle has been around a lot longer than social media. In fact, it’s centuries old and very simple. Your brand needs to contain something that people want to tell others about. Other than the occasional brand train wreck, what brands are truly worth discussing? You need fans and people who want to selflessly evangelize about what you do, because they love it and want to tell others. The motivation might come from wanting to be the first kid on the block with the new toy, a desire to be the resident expert on something, or just an overflow of genuine delight.

These five aspects are no magic recipe, but instead, we hope that they’re a handful of crucial steps on the painstaking road towards brand greatness. Now get going.

Like a plot twist gone astray, the streaming film company, Netflix, has once again befuddled customers by reversing course with a recent brand announcement. Weeks ago, Netflix announced its intention to divide its streaming and physical mail business units into two separate entities, while simultaneously apologizing for recent price hikes. This effort was intended to kick off the renamed DVD mail service, christening it Qwikster. Apparently, public outcry and common sense won the day, as Netflix backtracked and rejiggered its plans.

This on-again, off-again game of brand Twister has damaged the Netflix name and its brand cache. While we can only guess at the business reasons that motivated these decisions, it’s plain to see how Netflix shot itself in the foot from a brand perspective.

In some ways, the rationale behind Netflix’s merry-go-round of christening, defending, and retreating from its plans doesn’t matter. Brand identities are tightly bound up in what people think and feel about a particular brand, and most everyday customers won’t ever get to know a company’s reasoning for an initiative. They shouldn’t have to — brand decisions are made in the present, where they affect, challenge, and reflect on an organization — for better or for worse.

We think it’s a useful and instructive exercise to rewind the film, so to speak, and walk through some of the reasons why Netflix’s actions are the equivalent of a disaster movie, or maybe just brand mistakes, seen in high definition.

Brand Equity Squandered
Netflix painstakingly built and earned its reputation as a forward-thinking, powerful content provider, employing a Long Tail strategy to re-envision the movie rental industry. The future-forward vision of delivering films and television to users initially focused on using direct mail as the vehicle for providing films quickly. Fast delivery, responsive customer service, and a super-optimized supply system were all strong brand attributes, and crucial to its growth. Coupled with the company’s commitment to developing better and better recommendation algorithms, all of these factors drove Netflix’s popularity and to a place as the leader in its sector. Cute little red envelopes became synonymous with fast service and the delight and surprise of receiving your next film in the mail. The website experience of Netflix was helpful, friendly, and user focused.

But changes have taken hold in the industry, with corporations moving towards streaming models of delivery, and while Netflix did it first (and arguably, best), it mis-managed the evolution of its brand. This Qwikster debacle grew out of this shift away from Netflix’s original model, and that, coupled with an earlier price hike, started pushing away many of the company’s loyal customers and fans. In surprisingly short order, Netflix began squandering many of the good feelings and past positive experiences previously associated with its brand, as users began to feel excluded and alienated from the formerly warm embrace of Netflix.

Business-friendly, User Hostile
The move to focus more on streaming users makes sense, and that change is a wise one for the company. But the initial concept of the Qwikster rollout was primarily built around the needs of the business, and not users. From a user experience perspective, it seems foolish and nonsensical for a single company to force current users to navigate two distinct websites, handle user accounts separately, and degrade the user experience by providing no integration between the related sites. These are not the actions of a company focused on its customer base, and it made many of the Netflix DVD/Blu-Ray subscribers feel like second-class citizens.

Better to Retreat Than Stand Your Ground
But we have to cut Netflix a little slack. Every brand has missteps. Remember the Apple Newton? No one is immune from screw ups, and the best and most popular brands get to make their mistakes right in the spotlight. So, a brand has to make a decision — to retrench, and fix the problems, or stand their ground and defend the decision. But we know what happened to other brands who’ve gone down this path. New Coke? Tropicana rebranding? The Gap logo? You can circle the wagons, but eventually consumer-facing brands need to kneel before their customers and offer the mea culpa. The above brands survived after all the hoopla, and the name of the game is moving forward after a mistake.

But Who Drives This Train?
Of course, this seems to suggest a dangerous precedent. How willing are companies and organizations to hold the line when a seemingly unpopular decision promises to lead to better places tomorrow? Good PR can’t always serve as the indicator for whether a decision is correct or not. Often, the issue is not the actual decision itself, but how it is communicated to the target audiences and public at large. But even if communication is pitch-perfect and completely on-brand, bad things still happen to good brands. Sometimes a temporary black eye is the cost of visionary leadership.

Still Wondering
All that being said, Netflix’s handling of the scenario was odd — with strange communications, then an out-of-the-blue reversal. The company’s delivery was odd, which caused many to speculate that this rebranding was setting up its mail delivery component to be spun off completely, in anticipating of selling it off to another entity. Perhaps Netflix wanted to distance itself from soon-to-be-obsolete technology, maintaining its technology-forward brand image. Or possibly, the company wanted to jettison the extra baggage of hard costs and labor of mail service, as it seeks to become the premier content partner for streaming devices and online.

In the end, we don’t know. But we do know that Netflix could have done a few things to avoid these pitfalls. Here are a few brief thoughts that might serve as a good reminder:

Keep users first. There is always a fine line between decisions that make good business sense, and those that are good for users. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. But when in doubt, the more profitable decisions (in the long term) will always be for the good of customers.

It’s all about tone. How an organization communicates hard truths (like a price hike) is almost as important as the content of the actual message. Honesty, sincerity, and a clear message about why a decision will eventually benefit an audience will go much further than a strange, pseudo-apology. Directness, transparency, and consistency are the keys.

Don’t underestimate the value of a good name. Netflix almost threw away millions of dollars of brand equity by renaming part of their service. Forget the fact that the name was poorly-conceived (I still can’t spell it correctly!). Any change was a poor one, if it wasn’t going to utilize the goodwill, recognition, and singular awareness of a little red DVD envelope. When your organization spends years, millions of dollars in advertising, and the hard work of building a brand people can trust, renaming must be done with the most sober of mind, if it needs to be done at all.