Robin Wight said in his insight at Like Minds that brands exist to make the purchasing process easier. This was an eye opener for me because I realised how it is indeed the case that a brand reduces my need for original critical thought and makes me rely on what Robert Cialdini calls fixed action patterns – fixed ways of reacting based on certain mental shortcuts.

Certainly for the majority of brands that you’ll see at a supermarket, that’s their role. But what most of the Friends reading this will be in the business of doing is moving beyond brands that merely make it easier for us to purchase or align with. We are interested in making maning, in aspiration, in purpose, in challenge. Our ideal brand is one that people derive identity from.

The brand on three levels

In an exceptional video entitled Rethinking the Idea of the Brand, Umair Haque talks about three levels of brand. (Thanks to Brian Driggs for emailing it to me.)

• Functional brands seek to differentiate one product from another by targeting a particular demographic. This is what Umair describes as the base level of branding.
• Aspiration brands emerged as status symbols: I don’t buy a Samsung MP3 player, I buy an iPod. This is where Umair says we’ve been for the last 3 decades.
• Meaningful brands are, paraphrasing Umair, where a brand has a tangible output on the consumer’s life in terms that matter for them. He says furthermore than meaningful brands are the opposite of egocentric demand, which he calls alocentric. The general thrust is that a meaningful brand contributes to the human race, not just me as an individual.

(Side note for another discussion another day: I would understand Umair’s description of meaningful brands to be highly linked to community and we could also label them as social brands.)

Overcoming indifference with purpose

The power of the meaningful brand is that is overcomes indifference. With functional and aspiration brands saturating markets left, right and centre, a meaningful brand taps into something deeper than a brand meeting my immediate functional need.

In actual fact, I see meaningful brands as tapping into Maslow‘s top hierarchy of self-actualisation - or as I say – purpose.

Recently I was talking to someone who unites a community of people around an event. They wanted to know where to take the event, and my response was that they needed to go beyond entertainment (uniting people around a good time) and instead unite people around purpose. In other words, make meaning by helping the community make meaning.

As a church pastor, community builder, mentor and with Like Minds, I’ve always seen the direct benefit of basing the orgnisations purpose in the helping of others find their purpose.

How can you be indifferent to something that has helped further you on your quest for purpose and meaning?

Making your brand meaningful

We’ve covered enough ground for today, so tomorrow we’ll discuss just exactly how we make a brand meaningful. And what we need to discuss that is your feedback on this post now. The conversation has begun – now add your thoughts:

• How do you move a brand from aspirational to meaningful?
• What the meaningful brands in your life?

Hey all – just a quick note to say that I am in Dubai all week, Monday 21 – Friday 25 February, and would love to meet you if you are here, or would love to catch up with any connections that you think might be prudent for me, as we are taking Like Minds out here later on this year.

If you can, comment on this thread, or drop me an email or a tweet, or preferably, just go right ahead and call me on 0044 7771 795566.

Hope to hear from you,
Scott

It’s with a hat tip to Jonny Rose who coined this phrase that I wanted to thank YOU all for embodying this very idea.

YOU – the friends who participate here on this, our blog – are a breed of people who have turned ego aside to find value in each other and bring that the front for the benefit of all.

In the face of digital narcism and online celebrity which has lured people into promoting the gospel of self, it’s my joy to have this last year enjoyed some incredible conversations with you all, many of which have blossomed into friendships and collaboration.

Last year I was afforded some incredible opportunities and from my travels across the world, my digital engagement around the web, and in particular through the Like Minds community who travelled to join us in Exeter, London and Helsinki, I’ve become more convinced of the truth and value of the following saying:

Seek to be interested, not interesting

It’s all about people, and the greatest joy in this world is to get to discover an individual. Within every person you’ll find experience, understanding, wisdom, pain, hope, inspiration and more. And with every person, the mix is different and the story unique.

I want to encourage you that this year, your growth, your answers, your solutions – they aren’t in helping yourself – they are in helping others.

So as we truly get into 2011 and might forget to look back from here on, I just wanted to pause and say that I thank you, I appreciate you, and I love you.

Scott

Well done to everyone who continually adds and breathes life into this blog through their engagement, whether it be comments, emails, tweet, skypes, phone calls or face to face catchups.

This is our achievement together!

Scott

P.S. Take a moment to also find some other exceptional leadership blogs on the list, and in particular you mist visit Mike Myatt’s N2Growth which wasn’t on the list but is my favourite leadership blog.

This month is Movember. It’s when men grow ugly moustaches to raise money and awareness about prostate cancer. And so not wanting to be left without contributing, above is my personal contribution to the fight against prostate cancer.

I’m asking that in return for having this hunk of hair on my upper lip all month, you give some money to the cause. £10 would be good.

On a personal level, I’m also raised nothing thus far, so I really need you guys to help me out and make a month without kissing my wife worth it!

So dig deep and give some change here.

The show is “We Grow Media“, which is also Dan’s consultancy. You can watch it live, which means you can pitch in with questions and insights during the interview.

Seeing as this is our blog and all, then this is our interview, and I’ll be talking about our community. Keep in touch while it’s live and give plenty of feedback!

On the other side of the ditch, you have community sites where it’s guest post after guest post, and there is a lack of an evolving narrative that guides people over the course of prolonged conversation.

Hence, welcome to what I trust is a middle ground: Scott Gould and Friends.

I’ve rebranded this blog of ours (it’s always been our blog) as Scott Gould and Friends. The name comes from the fact that whilst I write the posts, I do so from the comments that come from the friends who participate here, and thus my role is to guide the conversation that happens here. There’s also conversation that happens on a range of other places – your blogs – where you are the one who guides the conversation.

But to be sure, it’s about the friends.

Not followers, by the way. Friends sums up the fact that we are not only mutually connected with one another, but we’ve entered into friendship with each other, and that is a precious thing.

What Does This Mean?

1. There’s a beautiful new redesign. It’s not done, but 80% of the way there – we’ll tweak as we go. The idea is to help people find the gold that there is on this blog of ours more easily, hence I’ve arranged things by category menus.
2. You can introduce yourself on the Friends page – you’re an integral part of the blog!
3. I’m looking for guest posts from you. You know the content here, and if you have written something that you’d like to contribute here rather than on your own blog (the same way I write posts for elsewhere as they’d fit better elsewhere), then please bring it forward. For the moment, we’ll arrange this through the Contact page.
4. This is also part of the way I want to introduce a platform to empower people to use the gold that is on our blog.

But other than that, things won’t be too different – still deep and thoughtful pieces, still Sunday videos and ‘Leading Thoughts’ attached to every post – just with more emphasis on our community, because that for me is the real asset.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. How does this idea sit with you? I haven’t run it by any of you, so now is the time to deliver feedback – ways to do this better, ways this will work well, design comments, etc.
2. On a futurist note, how do you see the future of blogs with regards to participation? I’ve been trying some things on creating comment driven blog posts, and I’m still of the opinion that a strong sense of guidance is required to make sense of it all.
3. Finally, how are you? It’s been a while since we spoke last

Cheers,
Scott

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch direct on YouTube.

Hello friends – I am back from Spain (36°C) to the glorious English summer of clouds and rain. Certainly I am very, very rested and relaxed. I did no work except on the first two days, and for the majority of the holiday I didn’t even know what time it was as my watch and phone were out of sight!

A year ago after my summer holiday I said I felt re-envisioned, which was just before we launched Like Minds. This time, I feel like I’ve got a bit more re-prioritised.

Getting perspective, getting away and seeing things with fresh eyes, is a wonderful byproduct of a holiday. I find that month-on-month, we add things into our life that often are very unproductive, but we take them on because they demand our attention, and we get into the tradition of doing things for the sake of doing them. Many times we don’t even see this happen.

Or we find we are putting disproportionate amounts of time into the things that don’t yield the return that we should be putting more time into.

What I’ve found is that because a holiday STOPS you doing the little things like this, you are forced to reconsider what the priorities are.

Your Leading Thoughts

• I’m keen to know how you get perspective and how you find holidays help you.

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

I’m taking a much needed break over the next 3 weeks. My eyes have been very sore and are stressed to the point that I need to wear glasses for a while to ‘reset them’, according to the doctor.

This is the product of working very hard on Like Minds Helsinki, launching the Like Minds Club, doing more and more consulting with Aaron+Gould, doing A LOT with Touch 10 and really raising the media standard at The River Dream Centre, and also putting together the main parts of Like Minds Conference, Autumn 2010.

I’ve done more in the last 4 months than I have in any whole year before and I certainly feel that (with my sincere thanks to Michael Meyers, Drew Ellis and Robin Dickinson in particular), I have sharpened my focus, developed a stronger NO in order to have a stronger YES, and really built things of value.

So it is with joy that I now take a much needed break, but at the same time I know I will miss engaging with you all as much as I usually do.

What I will be doing is posting things here a few times a week that I’ve already lined up, and it is along this line that I have a request for you all, as my friends, peers, influencers, colleagues and brothers and sisters: Connect with each other in these comments.

Let me check in every few days and find that you’ve gotten to know each other more – that those of you who haven’t commented and have come and shared your much valued views – and that those of you who normally only comment on the post and not other’s comments have found new joy in discussing issues with one another.

And finally, let me come back to hear that you’ve scaled the levels of communication – that you’ve emailed, skyped, collaborated and even met up with one another – and created more valuable relationships.

I’ll catch you soon,
Scott.

Last night, my friend Stephanie Rudat shared this link. It’s a memorial website to Nate Henn, an American who died on Sunday in a terrorist attack in Uganda whilst working directly with children to alleviate the terror that is “children soldiers.”

Nate spent a year and a half working with Invisible Children, a completely voluntary role, where he became somewhat of a big brother to these children who desperately need some good role models. On Sunday, an explosion ripped through a rugby field where people were watching the World Cup Final. Unfortunately, both Nate and some of the children he was working with died. You can read the full story here.

When Stephanie shared this with me, I gave $100 dollars to their cause immediately. It’s not a lot, but more than I normally give to things online. I figured that if Nate could give his life, then I could give $100.

I know there are 101 causes that we can give to, but none has touched me immediately like this, hence I am sharing it here.

Let’s not let “social media for social good” just be a mantra. Let’s do it.