Who doesn't have a plan A these days? Everyone has one! Many even have a Plan B, even though the Plan B in the drawer is a common reason why Plan A doesn't work.
When it comes to a plan A for the brand story, the most common reason for failure is: the A is missing.
Yes, maybe my call today comes across as a bit prayerful for you, but on the other hand, it obviously can't be said often enough: your brand story needs A!
This is true for any brand story, but it is especially true for one that is connected to yourself as a person or to another real person.
Plan A for this is: Protect the A! Because without A it doesn't work. A plan A without A is a plan DOA - Dead on Arrival. A for authenticity.
And yet everything had started so well.
It was May 2016, Austria got a new chancellor in Christian Kern and the country seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. "Is he finally the politician we have been hoping for?" many people across all political camps asked themselves.
That was a super good start. A wiry man at 50 who had two skills rarely observed in an Austrian head of government.
- He managed to buy a suit in the right size, namely his size.
- He spoke freely at a level one might expect from an adult.
Political jargon? No, thank you. He used smooth phrases like "We would be well advised if ..." and put his salt-sprayed rhetorical finger salutary into the gaping political wound: "If we continue to deliver this spectacle, a spectacle of power obsession and future oblivion, then we have only a few months until the final impact." Ahhhhhhufathe in the country!
When asked about the rumour that he had masterfully strategised the untimely replacement of his predecessor, he said: "Honestly, it's a bit of poor man's House of Cards ." A little popular culture sarcasm for Netflix viewersas an extra bonus.
Christian Kern, a socialist and manager. Only in state-owned or state-related companies, but at least from the business world and at least not a hardcore functionary with three ballpoint pens and a pair of coloured reading glasses in his breast pocket. A crisp guy with relaxed, determined sovereignty, whose brown eyes shone so ice-blue that the people instinctively knew: He'll get us home safely. And if he has to walk across the water.
In short, Christian Kern did everything right. And so there was Emmanuel Macron standing in front of us, so to speak, even before Emmanuel Macron stood in front of us.
Suddenly, a whiff of charisma blew through Austria's barren domestic political landscape, lifting both the new chancellor and his party up in the polls.
Identity needs identity.
Christian Kern used the irretrievable chance of the first impression and perfectly outlined his personal brand story with his appearance.
- The opponents are clearly identified.
- There is no half-soft change, but something much better, namely the chance for something new.
- Content, look & feel, style - everything from a single source.
That's called brand identity!
It doesn't get any better than this.
Big one with star and a smurf stamped into the booklet.
Anyone who has ever developed a brand identity knows how difficult that is, especially brand identity for people. It really has to be developed, it has to come from within and must not be put on top - keyword: identity. Because this is the only way to create credibility. People smell fake, at least ten kilometres into the wind.
Experience is experienced credibility.
If you have credibility, you can make your brand tangible every second. In fact, it will be experienced anyway, whether you do it or not. So do it.
Brand experience is truth, and truth happens. Whether you want it to or not. Whether you are credible or not.
For every leader, every team leader, every manager and for every politician who positions herself as an active agent of change (as what else, really?) this means: Think of Robert Kennedy. See the world as it could be and ask: "Why not?"
Create the story of the future and share it with your people. Take one thing to heart: "People don't burn for compromise, they burn for principles and attitudes. (© Christian Kern)
Know the way, show the way, walk the way. Or as the Americans say: "Walk the talk!". This - and only this - is how people experience the credibility of your brand story.
Whoever says Plan A must also ...
The world keeps turning, everyday life naturally wears every superhero outfit down a little on the knees and elbows, plus marital crisis-like arguments with the coalition partner around the clock ...
In January 2017, "Truth Day" will be on the calendar and Christian Kern will be the focus of a professionally staged event. There he will ask the justified question "What are we waiting for? Time to shake things up." and presents his "Plan A for Austria."
At the same time, he presents the government partner with an ultimatum to implement a number of projects, thus again showing a move towards the goal, as befits a top manager.
But somehow the worm is in it. It seems that the negotiations on implementation are no longer conducted by the head of government with the coalition partner, but by the coalition partner with the participation of the head of government. The situation is twisting in such a way that in the end the leader agrees with the junior partner. What was the plan again?
This may be good for the country, but for Christian Kern's managerial brand story it turns out to be a herpes infection. He can no longer get rid of it.
Consequently, more and more people are unmistakably asking whether the image of the sovereign leader of a new style on the road to a better future, which was clearly painted a year ago, was perhaps more of a pipe dream. These questions are increasingly surfacing in his own organisation.
Does the brand of the new leader perhaps not fit in principle with the identity and culture of his organisation, and one has been seduced by the magic of the beginning?
Is Peter Drucker right after all, with the sentence: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"? - Yes, he is right.
If you say plan A, you also have to say -authenticity, otherwise you automatically say -rsch. And then it gets tight.
It's getting tight.
After many back and forths, the election campaign is finally on the agenda, because the ÖVP suddenly has a political hero of its own in Sebastian Kurz.
The bad news for the head of government and his troops is delivered unanimously by the many-voiced chorus of market researchers: "Dear people, they're beating the crap out of you!
What to do?
Angst, Panik & Partner are bad advisors, but in situations like these they are often the ones who get the advisory mandate because they are the only ones who want it, at least they shout the loudest and take charge. The result of their work quickly becomes apparent and is invariably the same: chaos and madness.
We often hear that history is repeating itself. That may be so. What is certain is that people make the same mistakes over and over again. In the best case, it is not the same people who make the same mistakes, but others.
I know what I am talking about. Almost ten years ago I was in almost the same situation in another place and it still turns my stomach when I remember it.
Everything different.
Returning to old values is usually a good approach, because like everything on earth, every brand can only grow healthily from its roots.
That is why a new film has been produced showing the rise of Christian Kern as a child from the simplest of backgrounds.
This film has one enormous advantage: the story is right. It is emotional. It fits the organisation. And it would probably have been the best story from the start, because it is authentic in every direction.
There are people who can speak given texts into a camera in such a way that the viewer is undoubtedly convinced that it is real. These people are actors.
There are very, very, very few non-actors who can do that. Christian Kern is not one of them. One has the feeling that he is playing a role, although he talks about nothing but his own life.
Now that the world, especially online, is moving more and more in the direction of moving images, all of us will soon be in the situation of standing in front of a camera, even if it's a smartphone camera.
If you want to do that or produce a film about real people with someone, then there is basically a plan A as a recipe for success. Let the people talk in their own words, speak their own language and observe them with the camera in a documentary way. That's how it becomes authentic, that's how it works. - After all, what's the point of working with real people if they come across as artificial?
It gets worse.
There are apparently enough people in the SPÖ + advisory team who have not seen this film and are convinced that Christian Kern is a good actor, so that another acting film has been produced. And which simultaneously implodes and explodes the Chancellor Kern brand story of May 2016.
- Why let the Chancellor play a Chancellor and not be himself?
- Why let two good ministers play two ministers badly and not be themselves?
- Why choose as a setting a world that has everything negative about politics as one of its general themes?
- Why is Christian Kern associated with Francis J. Underwood, the incarnation of the - we remember - "... spectacle of obsession with power and obliviousness to the future ..."? Among other things, the guy pushed a journalist in front of the underground and pissed on his father's grave, just by the way ...
- Why, in this film, does Christian Kern, in view of the positive prospects just presented to him, look as if not only his Personal Brand had caught herpes, but also he himself, in a place that makes sitting unbearable for him, and not only in this round?
- Who thinks that those people who would be smart enough to find this good wouldn't be smart enough to find this incredibly stupid?
- What about - we remember - "... then we have only a few months until the final impact ..."?
Welcome home.
If we have no brand message, no real brand story, then we are left with only one topic of conversation. Then we talk about the price. In politics, this means that if "... people do not burn for principles and attitudes ... " (© Christian Kern), then we just hand out money.
Thus, at the end of the film, the new mission statement: "Get what's coming to you." is fired and Kern suddenly stands at the far left of the pitch as a class-struggle populist. The final catch shot for the managerial brand Christian Kern, perfectly presented in May 2016.
The SPÖ has long since pinned the keyword justice to its banners. This is incredibly powerful fuel for the brand story engine. Who among us does not constantly feel unfairly treated at various levels of life? By the state and taxes, and by the anonymous power of institutions anyway ... pure empathy!
"Get what's coming to you". has nothing to do with justice, but very subtly and therefore effectively activates justice's ugly stepbrother, envy. "As long as someone has more than me, I am still entitled to something, and that should be taken away from the other person at least once, because he certainly doesn't have it rightly." In this way, the SPÖ is sinning against its own identity, both in terms of content and its role as a bulwark against populist excesses.
The SPÖ not only disavows its own brand story twice, but also offensively twists the Chancellor's brand into the opposite. We remember: "Honestly, this is a bit of House of Cards for the poor." Welcome home.
It is by no means certain that this strategy will be unsuccessful. In politics, quite different hair-raising things have already won applause, and in an election campaign a lot can happen even overnight - see Donald Trump. There are plenty of falling stars and comeback stories - see the current Martin Schulz and Angela Merkel.
In any case, the Christian Kern brand is massively damaged and, if it can be saved at all in the form in which it was originally placed, it will need a massive relaunch, in fact a repositioning from scratch, wherever he ends up after the election. And he would be well advised to do so with a plan A, A for authenticity.
Stubbornness is fun.
Authenticity is vital for your brand. This has always been the case and will certainly become even more important in the future because, not least since we moved into the Global Village, whether we like it or not, brand experience, transparency, verifiability, individualisation and everyone talking about us are constantly taking place.
So we'd best not stick to any nostrums on Power Point, but to Hermann Hesse, who writes in Eigensinn macht Spaß: "There is no other path of development and fulfilment for anyone than that of presenting one's own being as perfectly as possible. 'Be Thyself' is the ideal law, at least for the young person; there is no other path to truth and development."
So if you don't want to talk primly just about price, but respectfully engage with your audience, then engage people with an authentic story relevant to both of you. Because, as my grandmother, the old Story Dudette, used to say: No Story. No Glory.
