the art of the brand

Brands are about intent as well as presence. Underneath it all a brand delivers, or it fails. There can be long discussions about what it delivers, morally, ethically, or as an unintended consequence, as with many of the brands of the chemical industry.

   One of the interesting brands of the last decade has been e-bay, which is pseudo -arabic for electronic bid.  E-Bay has changed commerce in America, along with a related company, Amazon. The stories are well known. at different levels.  The story that interests me today is the acquisition a few years ago of PayPal, which now accounts for a large chunk (near 30%) of E-Bay’s actual revenues.

  some years ago in a town in Wisconin, a tiny note even wide spot in the road kind of town, but just a bunch of dairy farm s and a 100 square foot post office, one dairy farmer decided it would be easier for him to keep the farm running if he bought the building the post office rented from, and put in a gas station, since it was at the foot of the hill of his farm, right at the end of a long steep driveway. After a while, he would spend his spare time at th station, fixing other people’s cars, using learning he had acquired fixing his own. After a while his farm was better, and the town grew a little, and there was a need on his part for a large truck to pull stuff around. He bought a tow truck. He put in a telephone (yes, this was a while ago) and paid for the truck with wrecker calls. Totalled out vehicles wre put on a rocky part of the pasture where nohing much grew anyway, and his kids parted out the vehicles and got money for college.

 The gas station grew.  The area grew from tourism as well, more traffic, more fuel sold, more flat tires fixed, more tourists, more fuel tax making better roads, more fuel sold.

The dairy farm , never havng a cash crunch, grew as well, since he was on the buying end of lots of disress sales as the farming cycle went through its rhythms. After 3 decades, the people of the now grown town decided they could save a lot of money if they had their own bank. Guess who they came to for founding capital? yeah.

  E-Bay is busy positioning itelf t re-create that story.  The “research labs” at PayPal are now making it possible to move money over text message, do dunning, bill collection, and buyin and selling over a cel phone. On th e-side of things, E-Bay is setting itelf to become what sears-roebuck once was. You have heard them, right?  Probably not so much. The brand died when the employees lost focus, leaving behind All-State insurance, dean witter, and a handful of other financial brands. Money. Money is not real, and not truly tangible. It therefore becomes the ideal tool for building wealth on the Net.

  And E-Bay knows it.

Is there something about your own brand that you do not understand? Something about how your vision no longer makes sense in a  truly plugged in world?  Whether your brand lives or dies may depend on the answer.