Is it possible your deepest brand values are the ones you need to change?
In reading a review of a biography of journalist and professional dissenter I. F. Stone, I noticed a brief mention that he'd taught himself Greek late in life, and even written a book about Socrates. This jiggled loose a rusty switch in my memory: Edmund Wilson, another essayist (and hero of mine), had also chosen to learn Greek shortly before his death. His goal was to read the Bible in something close to its original tongue.
I find the gesture deeply inspiring.
Both guys were debilitated by ill-health and could have easily chosen to be angry and bored. It's what most people do, and many do it much sooner than the infirmities and indignities of aging might warrant.
The Human Condition is grossly unfair because, ultimately, it's a brief walk that ends in a catastrophe, and its latter parts usually come with the death of friends, various bodily ailments, and a realization that whatever you've accomplished along the way will inevitably turn to dust. You don't get to stick around and argue otherwise.
Wilson and Stone were no great paragons of goodness; one was a serious drinker obsessed with sex, and the other a prickly sort who may well have spied on America for the Soviets. We could debate the merits of their reporting and scholarship, though I'd argue pretty hard that Wilson's book "To The Finland Station" should be required reading for anybody who wants to understand the lure of utopian societies (and why they repeatedly fail).
But both men refused to give up. When the world wouldn't have required or expected anything from them, they decided to improve their own minds. They chose to stay engaged, to challenge themselves, and make sure that what they did tomorrow wasn’t just a recollection of what they’d did yesterday. They chose reinvention over nostalgia.
It doesn't really matter to me how they did it, per se. Ancient Greek has no inherent value in my book, and I'm not sure their last works were necessarily important or even altogether insightful. I'm simply impressed that they did it, instead of electing to watch sports, torture their families, or whatever else people do when they aren’t inspired to do much of anything at all. I feel the same way about George H.W. Bush, who insists on jumping out of airplanes to commemorate his birthdays since turning 80.
There's a lesson here, right? All of us still have time to learn Greek.
The Bulb Asks:
- Do you think it's too late (or costly) to reinvent your brand?
- Are the qualities you rely upon for your brand values really strengths or assumptions?
- What would be the hardest thing to change about how you got to market...and might it be the best thing you could do?
