Languages are living realities that change over time and adapt to the needs of the people who speak them. So much so, that there are words that exist only in certain languages, because there are also realities that exist only for certain groups of people.
Eskimos, Inuits and Yupiks who inhabit the Arctic regions of the planet use up to 40 different words to refer to snow and are able to distinguish up to 30 shades of white. Their lives depend on their ability to move around and find food in an environment in which snow is the only feature of the landscape. The color of the ice indicates its thickness, helping them avoid dangerous areas and identify the best places to make a hole for fishing. Color can alert them to the presence of a polar bear camouflaged in the landscape. If they did not have a specific way to express each of these realities, life in the snowy wilderness would be much more complicated. Identifying these realities is a remedy against confusion and it helps them survive. Human beings often name things when faced with the need to identify a reality.
After a long professional career in contact with the reality of companies and the brands that represent them, it is interesting to see how our language has grown enormously in this aspect. We know that “management” refers to more than its traditional dictionary definition and that it implies a whole range of intangible elements such as leadership abilities and talent management. We know that “know-how” does not just refer to a brand’s accumulated experience; it also encompasses all the knowledge generated and shared by the people involved. Our business language has also been enriched by a large number of neologisms (from the Greek neo logo), i.e., new words that help us identify emerging realities, or that at least provide us with a new way of looking at the same reality. This renewed business glossary may refer to processes that already existed, but the words now incorporate a more human, multifaceted dimension that stretches beyond strictly business-related aspects.
By using these new terms, we have changed our perspective on the reality of organizations. Are you aware of it? As our idea of what a company is and how it operates changes, we create new words to help us identify it.
However, there is still one thing that we have not been able to find a name for. And, as it turns out, it might be the most important thing of all, because it is what all companies that stand out have in common. We find this same concept, under different names, in each of the “Surprises” in Part I of this book.
We have sometimes called it the company’s “DNA.” Other times we have called it a “vision.” We have said that companies with a “personality” have it. Analyzing various cases, we have seen that those companies that have it are following a “path,” pursuing an objective.
We have said that they all hold an important place within the soul of the consumer. In discussing how they have achieved this, we have reached the conclusion that these brands are able to “strike a chord” where others do not, that they have a “special character,” a “different culture.”
We have seen that El Bulli, Mercadona, Bausch & Lomb and Coca-Cola are brands that “have it.”
But what exactly is “it”? For those of us who dedicate our careers to living and coexisting with and for brands – examining them, exploring them in every minute detail, trying to dive deep and understand all of their dimensions – this question is always on our minds.
We have described “it” in many different ways. But talking about something without a name is like saying that it does not really exist; we can only attempt to describe it with the help of other words. And that will not do. What we need is to give it a name, make it real, make it visible. Let us, then, call it a DREAM.