Recently, I saw an article that spoke about Vancouver’s Binners’ Project. For those of you who are not familiar with this group of people, these are the men and women who, in their own way, help keep Vancouver the beautiful city that it is. They are not high-paid employees, nor are they politicians working on the city’s behalf; they are the people who scavenge every day to find bottles and other recyclable goods that they can redeem for cash to keep themselves alive.
What is interesting to me is through organization, branding and storytelling, they have gone from being outcasts to winning respect as productive members of society. They are the same people, doing the same things, in the same way, but because we have given them a name and a standard to march behind, they are seen as more valuable to society. Why? It is about perception. People and, for that matter, brands, are only as valuable as how others perceive them. People and companies can influence their brand through actions and words, but the true value of their brand, whether it is personal or corporate, is determined by how people engage with it.
Back to our Vancouver binners. When they show up at an event in their green T-shirts with a white logo, process the garbage cans and recycle bins, load all the materials into bags and cart them off to be recycled, they are deemed by people around them as providing a valuable service. However, if you saw these same people come to an event wearing everyday street clothes, rummaging through bins and taking cans and bottles away en masse, someone would probably call security. How can a simple logo make that much of a difference?
The reason it does is that branding helps to create a story of legitimacy. It allows others have an anchor in their mind that they can attach value to and tell a compelling story. Branding, by its true definition, provides a point of reference. It allows for trust to be created and ideas of value to be formed. This is not an overnight process. You cannot just create a brand and have it be seen as valuable at once. It takes time for people to recognize the brand, become curious about it, define it in their minds and attach value to it. How is this done? Through consistency of communication and action.
As Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” It is how you make people feel that creates your brand and cements it in the minds of others. It is the consistency of action and words, over time, that helps develop those feelings, and only through that long-term consistency can a valuable and powerful personal or corporate brand be created.
The binners are authentic. They do what they do, every day, with a goal in mind – to collect enough bottles and cans to help keep themselves alive and fed. However, the perception of others is that the binners are doing their part to keep our great city clean and keeping recycled materials out of the landfill. For that, people feel good and want to help them. They leave bottles and cans out where they can be easily found and have even designed hooks that can be attached to fences so that binners know exactly where to look for that bag of recyclables. In short, the binners have proven their value.
What is the value that you provide, either personally or corporately as a brand? What do you do every day to consistently tell your story compellingly so that others listen, understand and want to engage? Every one of us is valuable and unique; it is through branding that we can tell our stories in a way that people want to hear. •
Ben Baker, president and CEO of www.yourbrandmarketing.com, helps brands tell engaging stories that compel their customers to take action.
