Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

First and foremost, I think it’s the responsibility of a leader to have a sense of a vision. But it’s also important to build that vision with your colleagues.

designers create and interpret culture.

You need to be able to break through orthodoxies and conventions that most people accept.

So if you are trying to pioneer something entirely new, and you want to be successful, you’ve got to be persuasive. I am not really very timid. I don’t curl up in situations that are new or challenging. And I am not intimidated by people.

A brand, says Daniel, is a promise exchanged, and brands derive their appeal from two key factors: their utility—whether or not they fulfill their function or purpose—and their significance—the range of affiliations that a brand generates between a person and an object,

In order to be truly imaginative, you must possess an unusual level of self-confidence and creativity.

There is a certain amount of clutching to the present and familiar that’s going on right now.

we are going to have an accretion of provenance branding—of the brand as a manifestation of place and of “where I come from.” The place is going to become very, very important.

I felt that brand management was at the intersection of creativity, strategic thinking, analytical thinking, and design thinking.