An Essay On Brand: Aspiration Over Product

A true brand knows that it’s important to make every experience just right. They know it’s more than their product that must deliver. It’s every message and interaction that should culminate into a delivery on a promise. 

That promise isn’t goods or services. It’s people’s aspirations.  

No one is considering the thing you make because of its cost, quality, or value. They’re considering how it will transform them from who they are into who they want to be. 

The rest is just a negotiation.

If it wasn’t for this tension of who we are and who we want to be, human progress would cease to exist.

We align ourselves with the brands whose promises align with who we want to become. We do this long before we are ready to buy.

As long as brands keep their promise, people will make the pilgrimage from wherever they are to wherever they need to be.

Aspiration Over Product

Paraphrasing Seth Godin; 

“Nike is a brand. Hilton is a logo. We can all imagine what a Nike hotel would look like. None of us knows what a Hilton shoe would look like.”

That’s because Nike doesn’t sell footwear; they sell athletic empowerment.

It’s no coincidence that true brands like Nike often align with fashion. Fashion is a collection of society’s aspirations manifested in culture. 

But fashions can be fashionable. Here today, gone tomorrow. 

True brands are durable. Their appeal persists era to era; generation to generation. 

This is not because they’re true to themselves; brands evolve just like culture and society. 

It’s because they’re true to the aspirations they represent. 

For a true brand to become irrelevant, they would have to either stop delivering on their promise or the whole of society would have to stop aspiring for what they’re promising. 

Some Brands Endure

Man and horse used to have an unbreakable bond. Together they traveled long distances, plowed fields, and rode into battle. 

Today, most people haven’t ridden a horse in their lifetime. 

Still, many infamous fashion brands like Hermes and Coach started as leather goods manufacturers for an equestrian society. 

Technology evolved and society stopped buying horses and carriages but they keep buying Hermes handbags.  

Hermes persisted and evolved while many other companies who made the same products they did, are gone forever. 

Why is that? 

Hermes delivers on people’s aspirations: the aspiration to belong to a rung of society who travels with the best. With or without the horse. 

Hermes delivers on an aspiration that is durable and central to who we are as human beings.

Nike and Hermes deliver on aspirations that are as old as civilization. It’s only fitting that their names evoke Greek gods. 

The Human Ladder of Aspiration

Aspiration is someone staring into the sky climbing an endless ladder. It’s never-ending because to end would mean there’s nothing further to reach for. 

We always need an aspiration. Another step on the ladder to climb. It’s core to the human spirit. 

Your brand, however small or big, can align with eternal human aspirations without having to be like Icarus flying too close to the sun. 

Our Promise

At Print Shoppe, we empower brands to deliver on their promise. 

We do this by helping them create communications at scale that are consistent, tangible, and worthy of the aspirations they represent.

We just happen to do it with print + mail.

For now.