Branded Blog

A couple of weekends ago my paternal unit’s paradoxical fascination (he hates flying) with the highest fastest craziest pilots and planes got the better of us and we all got up at sparrows to join the trail of cars heading towards Ysterplaat Airforce Base, located between Century City and Brooklyn in a strange amalgam of new South African areas.

We parked not too far down the road from the main entrance at about 7:45am and there were already cars lining up every possible space down the main street and side streets, watched by curious locals over their fences & from behind their boerewors roll stands and ‘chips for sale’ tables.

Tickets were not for sale at the main gate, here we were simply herded cattle-style through the narrow pedestrian gate (“You are not a vehicle, lady” I was informed by the uniformed crewcut Afrikaans accent unfortunate enough to be on guard duty that day) while the wide-open vehicular gate was left mostly empty.  A long walk through the fairly quiet front end of the base past some aeroplane dinosaurs on display finally got us to the ticket gate and in to AAD 2010.

AAD or African Aerospace & Defence Show turned out to be far more impressive and of much grander scale than I’d imagined.  Hangar after hangar was chock-a-block full of country sized country defence exhibitions, components manufacturers, training suppliers, gear manufacturers, flying schools, tanks and the local Spur. Along with a myriad of other fast food and drink outlets to keep hungry sky-watchers and tank driver wannabees fed and happy.

Now let me be clear – I have at best an ambivalent relationship to weaponry, armaments, defence and all things war-like. In short, I don’t like them. I think they’re expensive, scary and making far too much money for lots of the wrong people.  But even I have my weak points, and helicopters are where it’s at for me. I love them! I’ve flown in a commercial chopper around the tip of Cape Point (highly recommended for visitors and locals alike), and in a genuine Vietnam era Huey helicopter at tree-top height with the doors wide open (team-building event of all things!) and I would love to be able to fly one myself. There’s just something about being able to move in any direction that takes your fancy that really does it for me. So apart from the myriad options on display on the ground, the two pirouetting & hand-standing helicopters were high on my favourites list.

But there were a lot of impressive things flying around up there that Friday, whether you prefer the breath-taking insanity of the mach 2 sound wall of a Gripen on it’s way past, or the choreographed acrobatics of the 5 Silver Falcons painting a heart in the sky or giving their trade-mark fan-like salute.

Or even the flair of some crazy opera accompanied Italians taking off in a DC6 cargo plane straight into a loop at what felt like head-height, and then doing aerobatics – I kid you not – in that big fat cargo plane.  Very impressive, if not a little bizarre.  On the ground you could climb in tanks, see what it’s like in the undercover spy tents, watch some divers in a training tank, see the interiors of armoured cars, or even take a stroll through the cavernous belly of the enormous American C17 Globemaster – the albatross-like mother of all cargo ships in between the aerial displays and breathing in the heady fumes of JetA1 fuel as the acts were fuelled up and lined up along the run-way, ready to dance.

And it really was all very impressive and certainly a lot more interesting and diverse than I had been expecting, but it did have one draw-back:  a lot of looking up.

Now, looking up can be a good thing. Looking up for a long time, however, can get pretty tiring. Even if you happen to be watching some of the most impressive displays of aerobatic flying in the country.

And somewhere between the dancing helicopters and the tumbling Italian cargo plane, it reminded me of a question that had been asked in a workshop I attended a long time ago.

The audience question was about how you know when to give rather than receive, and vice versa. And the answer came in the form of another question:  “Which is more important,” he asked, “breathing in, or breathing out?”  And the audience was stumped.  The answer, simple and clear, was this:  “The more important breath is the one you didn’t do last.”

And this is what popped into my head when my neck and shoulders protested that I had been looking up for too long at the air-show. What I really, really needed to do just then was simply look down for a while.

And by now I’m sure you know where this is going next!

I think in our brands (and our lives), we often get stuck looking in just one direction. And eventually it gets uncomfortable & stops being productive or fun or helpful, even if it started out that way.  Because looking in just one direction, no matter how great is was to start with, means there’s a whole lot of other stuff that you’re not even seeing anymore.

So here is my view on getting un-stuck on your brand (or your life).

1. Move. If you don’t know where you’re looking or can’t remember what your focus was when you started, simply do something different to what you normally do.  Be the Italian cargo plane and do the take-off loop even though everyone thinks you’re crazy. The principle is that change is good. When you’re stuck but you’re not sure what stuckness you’re in, any change will be a good change because it’s movement. Even if you figure out later that you’re moving in a wrong direction, at least you’re moving. And then you know where you are and where you’re looking, and you can make better decisions than you could have when you were still stuck. And that has got to be better than being stuck and wondering why your neck just keeps hurting.

2.  Ask around.  Ask some colleagues, some suppliers, some friends, some family – ask people around you where they think your brand (or life) is stuck. Send out an SOS.  It’s surprising how often those around us are much clearer and much more able to pinpoint the direction we’re stuck in, than we are. Just ask, they might surprise you!

3. Do the Opposite. And this sounds extreme, I realise, but go with me for a second. If you’ve made a change and asked around, you will probably start to get an idea of what’s being going wrong – what the “stuckness” is all about. And once you know this, the direct opposite can be a very helpful thing to have a look at. Say, for example, your brand has been really focussed on a future growth plan, on a new target market or on driving innovation and all of a sudden you all feel stuck. Do the opposite and instead of obsessively staring ahead, stop and look back for a bit – look at the history of the brand, the core consumers, the products that have been around the longest  – and see if in focusing on the future too much, you haven’t lost some of the magic of the past and that has gotten you stuck.  And the same can apply in reverse.

4. And finally, Remember you have a team or a wingman. Both if you’re lucky. Use them, that’s what they’re there for.

Getting stuck often happens when we’re not looking. Getting un-stuck takes a whole lot more work, but can make the biggest difference to the way the story turns out.

Oh, and don’t forget to breathe. Often & deeply. It’s pretty helpful.