The Branding Game

Whoa. I just witnessed the ending to maybe the best video game I've ever played—BioShock Infinite. The game topples the typical stereotypes of the entire video game genre; it doesn't dull the player's mind, it doesn't divorce them from reality, it doesn't incorporate obvious game structure. Infinite steps out of the gamer box and digs a flag into the ground declaring itself a pioneer legitimizing the art form games can be. What makes BioShock so great are the same things that make social brands remarkable.

The basics are done so perfectly that they get out of the way. Players don't notice load screens, glitches don't freeze the game, the environment looks realistic, the physics makes sense—the fundamentals for a believable world are so sturdy that the game actually delivers a universe that immerses the player. Similarly, a socially active brand should master platforms and strategy so well that the customer doesn't even notice them and gets to business falling in love with the brand.

The characters are meaningful because they develop, they are round. BioShock only introduces characters it intends to develop and even the most shallow characters within the story are fleshed out with back stories that fit perfectly within the overall narrative. Likewise, we should imagine company a an imaginary person, a brand is their personality—the character customers will get to know. The most powerful brands are like characters within an epic: they reflect and ultimately impact the cultures in which they develop, they celebrate the legend of their founders, and they champion a core mission. Turn a brand into a character that interacts consistently with customers among social and traditional media and watch consumers fall in love. By the way, customer love doesn't just echo across Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, and other social media—it puts dollars on the balance sheet.

The story is extraordinary because it is about the player, as a person, in the real world. BioShock is remarkable because it challenges the player to reconsider their own decision making and moral barometer. Its story is always about the player. Seth Godin mentioned that the central character of the brand's story isn't the brand itself, but the people who interact with it. To relate to my above example, the customer could be the hero or the damsel in distress, but they should never observe from the sidelines.

A Great, Big, Beautiful Persona

There's no one in class. My rhetoric of written communications class is more like a scene from a Western saloon than a coveted class section at UGA. I'm almost certain a tumble weed just rolled across the front of the room. I bet the same is true of the workplace—nobody wants to get down to work.

Why are so many of my peers playing hooky? I blame the weather. Georgia is thawing from an extended Winter and people across the state are fleeing conditioned air for the warm sunshine and soft grass. Behind the indoor exodus is the assumption that work is intrinsically boring. But that's only  true if students are shackled to a desk and employees are caged in cubicles to perform mundane tasks and satisfy social constrictions. A quick step outside our work-time paradigm introduces us to a new reality in full bloom.

We can unlatch ourselves from work we hate if we redefine our jobs. Instead of a student in this classroom, I consider myself a keeper of secrets—the sole surviving scribe of a forgone people set out to preserve knowledge upon this Earth. Likewise, a public accountant could redefine her job to be a champion of fun in the office. A marketer would realize these redefinitions as new personas. Give yourself a more exciting persona, cultivate it, and see if it doesn't improve the quality of your life. 

Similarly, every brand should have a strong, identifiable, and relatable persona across online media. Just as you give yourself an upgrade with a well defined persona, consider your brand a person and give him or her a persona promotion. Users will love it and your boss will love your engagement.