Brand flew over the cuckoo's nest

When I was in college, the psychology major seemed to attract many of the campus crazies. I know because I was one of them. This notion was confirmed when my 1101 professor told us students that if we were taking the class to find out what was wrong with us to get out. Later, in a clinical class, we took a popular psychological test and the professor reassured us, “don’t worry, psych majors always score high on the dissociative/psychotic spectrum.”

Well, that’s a relief.

I had originally set out in academia with the goal of being a clinician, but my other two majors, keg parties and sorority girls, left little time for all that extra studying. There is always that awkward moment in the upper level psych class when the professor asks what everyone will do after graduation, to which 99% of the class says “grad school” and I say “following the jam band Widespread Panic and selling veggie burritos out of my Subaru for gas money.”

I did get the book, however. The book is the manual for a practicing psychologist. No, it does not contain special instructions or insight into Freud’s coke habit. It’s far more important than that. The book contains the numerical assignments of diagnoses which psychologists used to get paid by insurance companies. The book is the Diagnostic Statistic Manual or DSM.

Do you pee in your pants to show anger or frustration? Then you might get a diagnosis of diurnal enuresis #307.6. Have a grandiose sense of self importance, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy for others and do not work in Hollywood? You might just be #301.81 or narcissistic personality disorder. The DSM makes a diagnosis along a five axis system. Each axis represents a sector that affects psychological health, and they are as follows:

1) clinical disorders
2) personality disorders
3) general medical conditions
4) psychosocial and environmental problems
5) global assessment of functioning


The result is a fuller way of looking at a person and their ability to function in society.
As marketers, we like to personify our products and brands. We talk about their maturity, strength and personality. Sometimes with make little idiograms of people that represent our brands. Our brands are very much like people to us, which makes this marketer think we should put them on the couch.

Tell me about your mother.

A brand should check in with the head shrinkers from time to time- not because there is a problem, but simply from the passage of time as those closest to the brand may need a little dialogue. Then again you might need a confrontation to talk about the brand’s issues so that they don’t get out of control.

I believe we all sit in the psychologist seat from time to time when it comes to brands. We talk about personality and aspirations. We talk about how well our brand plays with others. We deserve a way to evaluate and measure our brand’s mental health.

So here it is.

Dr. Snowden’s diagnostic and statistical measure of brand mental health (or, the SnowDSM, trademark applied for).


I) Clinical disorders (who exactly are you)

In the real DSM, this is where schizophrenia goes. In the SnowDSM it’s the same. Sometimes brands are confused. They react to threats that are not there. They see opportunities in the market that are nothing but hallucinations. To the rest of us, they just appear odd.

This is the place to boil down who you really are. A brand is as much the sum of perspectives as anything else. Understanding the consumer perspective, the marketer’s perspective and the distance between the two is what this axis is all about.


II) Personality disorders

Some of our greatest leaders have total narcissism. There are personality traits that have been celebrated in one era only to be loathed in another. If you’re going to put the brand on the couch for any reason, a personality inventory is as good as reason as any.

Where axis one and axis two differ is in internal company awareness. In axis one, the company is simply unaware or deluded into a particular thought stream. In axis two, they just don’t care.

I have had a number of clients insist we should simply change the way people think. I’m not saying draw consumers towards a particular action or sway opinion. I’m saying we’ve been asked to abruptly present information counter to a consumer’s perspective and change their minds.

Amazingly enough, we’ve pulled it off a few times. However, there are no guarantees in marketing and pursuing a consumer with a myopic and self-centered orientation rarely works.



III) General medical condition

Time takes its toll on brands much like it does on people. That once vibrant, youthful vigor is now referred to as the everyday grind. The excitement of the brand has, perhaps, begun to wane and fresh ideas are put down like a lame dog.

Axis three is more about the internal wants and desires for a brand. Sometimes simply milking the profit from an old and entrenched position is the aim. Sometimes a brand needs a new regiment and one would be wise to very much consider issues which fall under this axis before the budget is written.

IV) Psychosocial and environmental problems (educational, occupational, economic and legal problems)

I have yet to see marketing truly exist in a bubble. Outside forces inevitably affect a brand and to ignore such forces is not wise. As markets crest and fall, strategies should seek to ride the wave rather than be swept away by it.

There is caution here. Occasionally, marketing focuses on addressing the problems in this axis to the exclusion of other efforts. I have seen a client move a huge share of the resources to defending a lawsuit through the newspaper. The problem: most consumers didn’t really care about the lawsuit and when they stopped hearing the companies’ main pitch, the company was forgotten.

And that brings up another word on strategy.


V) Global assessment of functioning.

The strategy is the heart. A feasible and potent strategy is the key and should be the barometer to the brand’s overall health. No matter what the execution, marketers should be constantly testing and evolving a strategy to meet impending needs.

If a company’s marketing efforts are waning, strategy is the first place to look. Is the brand promise doable? Is there sufficient pull from consumers to justify the brand promise? Do we have the tactic to make a compelling case?

Take two and call me in the morning.

Take a moment or two and think about your brand’s personality. If that brand were a person, would you like to be friends with it? Would you find your brand to be a valuable friend? Would you seek out similar relationships?

If the answers are no, you might send your brand to the shrink. Take heed in the famous words: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” Freud said that and I agree with him. Cocaine fiend or not.



Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Ga that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com