Each month we publish a Discussion Paper delving deep into the world of meaningful brands. This month we explored the topic 'Why Meaning Matters for Business and Business Matters for Meaning'

1. 1
THE BUSINESS OF MEANING
Meaning matters for business;
business matters for meaning.
Would people miss your brand if it disappeared tomorrow?
Discussion Paper | January 2016
Adam Johnson & Clare Goodridge
Published by The Lover & The Engineer

2. 2
Executive summary
Business matters for meaning; meaning matters for business.
Humans are defined by their search for
meaning. It’s how we make sense of the
thousands and thousands of messages that
we receive every day. We decide which of the
messages matter, that is, which messages
are meaningful.
We resolve which messages are meaningful
by having an understanding of our identity,
and how everything we absorb relates to that
identity. Meaning and self are connected. A
strong sense of self permits meaning to be
derived from the world, and meaning permits
a strong self of self.
Traditional anchors for meaning were
relatively static, being connected to religion,
where you lived, what you did for a wage,
your family upbringing. These anchors are
losing their power, and the sense of self
starts to form in a much more fluid world.
In this world, brands can help people derive
meaning and thus a sense of self.
Brands can give people a convenient and
authentic shorthand for self-expression
that is also deeply connected to personal
goals and motivations. Brands can be more
than placeholders for identity; they can also
guide action. Cues from a brand can be taken
and used to guide how to interpret a life
consistent with that brand’s meaning and
identity.
Meaningful brands help people create
anchors. They can contribute to the wellbeing
of individuals and communities. Meaningful
brands transcend rational judgement and are
desired because they create an emotional
resonance.
Meaningful brands are effectively marketed,
as the sense of identity that they contain
for their audience makes it easy for that
audience to authentically market the brand.
They are also brands that people will pay a
premium for, as the meaning represented by
the brand makes price far less important
in decision making. And meaningful brands
are valuable, with research concluding that
they outperform the stock market by 133%.
Meaning is important to prevent a brand
from becoming a commodity. Where
brands are seen as selling commodities,
customers’ purchasing decisions are
transactional and competition becomes a
death spiral. Brands avoid this death spiral
by becoming deeply meaningful to their
audience.
It is not straightforward to become
meaningful. Meaning grows over time,
and it is nurtured in human connection.
For a brand to connect with humans, it
must be deliberate and cultivate empathy
and vulnerability. People need to know what
a brand is, what it stands for.
There needs to be a self-apparent way in
which a brand contributes to how a person
forms meaning in the world, and this is
uncovered by a brand thinking deeply
about itself. Understanding why it exists,
its values, its personality. Knowing this, a
brand has what it needs to communicate a
consistent and compelling sense of identity.
A clear identity means that a brand can
communicate meaning for people. It can
feel solid and filled with meaning, enabling
people to empathise and connect with the
brand. Such a brand can communicate in
ways that encourage empathy, such as
through stories.
Brand communications must always
be consistent with the brand identity.
Brands become meaningful when they are
consistent in their identity and empathise
with their audience. Brands become
meaningful when they are humanised and
given the opportunity to connect through
vulnerability, empathy and emotion.

3. 3
Contents
1
Introduction
04
Humans search
for meaning
Humans are characterised
by their search for meaning.
04
Meaning and self
We need to become
clear as people on what
is meaningful.
04
Anchors
In the past, meaning and
self were relatively static.
05
Brands as shorthand
The sense of self forms from
a much more fluid world.
05
How brands can be
shorthand for identity
05
How brands can
guide action
Brands can be more
than mere placeholders
to express identity.
2
Meaningful
Brands
06
Meaning and
self expression
The shorthand offered
by meaningful brands
ultimately lets people
express themselves
more completely.
06
Meaning matters for
business because it
makes your marketing
more effective
A meaningful brand doesn’t
need to convince people.
06
A meaningful brand is
a brand people will pay
a premium for
People want the meaning
that you create for them.
07
A meaningful brand is
a valuable brand
Its reservoir of meaning
has value, value that can
be represented in money.
07
Without meaning, brands
enter the death spiral of
transaction
If a brand is not meaningful,
then it is only selling
products or services.
07
Lifting above transaction
The alternative to waging
an escalating war with
your competitors is to
become deeply meaningful
to your audience.
07
The Infinite Game
of meaning
Create a conversation
around meaning.
3
Humanising
Brands
08
A brand must be vulnerable
to be meaningful
Meaning is important for
brands, vitally important,
but a brand cannot simply
command that it be so.
08
A brand must know itself
For a brand to connect
with humans, people need
to know what a brand is.
08
Brands need to
communicate in
a way that empathises
with people
A brand needs to have
a clear, stable identity.
09
Brand identity must
remain central
Regardless of the way in
which brands communicate
with empathy, there needs
to be a continued referral
back to a brand’s identity.
4
Discussion
Topics
10
5
Notes
11

4. 4
Chapter 1 | Introduction
Introduction
Humans are defined by their search for meaning.
1
Humans search for meaning
Humans are characterised by their search
for meaning. It’s something that people talk
about all the time, from Simon Sinek and
“Start With Why” 1
to Viktor E. Frankl’s book
Man’s Search for Meaning 2
. Humans even
invented astrology to derive meaning from
something as intrinsically meaningless as
the movement of planets.
We continually try to make sense of the
day to day events that buffet us. And as
the pitch and frequency of messages
increases, the need to derive meaning
becomes more urgent. We receive
thousands upon thousands of messages
every day. Messages that coax and cajole
us one way and then the other. Dreams
and visions and alternate realities that
all feel they could be a part of our
potential self.
These messages wash over us, a vast
sea that we need to somehow resolve
with our sense of self 3
. Ultimately, from
all of the messages around us we need
to understand “Does this matter?” This
question goes straight to the heart of
meaningfulness, because a message
matters if it is meaningful.
Meaning and self
To resolve messages with our sense of
self in a way that we benefit from, we
need to become clear as people on what
is meaningful. To have a very intimate
understanding of who we are, our identity,
and how everything we absorb relates to
that identity.
The messages that are relevant to our
identity are meaningful. The rest is
meaningless noise that we unconsciously
deal, but do not consciously engage in.
It’s for precisely this reason that we can
survive in a message rich environment;
we filter out the meaningless messages
and wrap ourselves closer around the
meaningful ones.
Meaning is vital for humans to reinforce
their sense of self. Without a sense of
meaning, our self is rapidly dissolved.
Indeed, a life without meaning doesn’t
feel imaginable. This isn’t to say that
a life needs to have a grand purpose to
be lived well, but rather that we create
meaningfulness around whatever life
we live.
Meaning and self are mutually supporting.
A strong sense of self permits meaning to
be derived from the world. It readily filters
out irrelevant messages and reinforces
meaningful ones, it is less buffeted.
Equally, meaning permits a strong
sense of self. When we have a compelling,
powerful sense of meaning, then our
sense of self is powerfully buttressed.
Anchors
In the past, meaning and self were relatively
static. They were connected to things such
as your religion, where you lived, what you
did for a wage, your family upbringing. These
are all strong anchors, but also anchors that
are rapidly losing their power.
For many, a secular age dissolves religion
as an anchor. The fast pace of change in
working life means that people are more
mobile and can expect to change profession
several times in a person’s career; this
dissolves secular anchors. And the family,
the “building block of society”, is becoming
less well defined as a unit, leading to the
traditional family being dissolved as an
anchor for meaning.
The extent of these changes have progressed
to the point where it feels anachronistic
to base one’s self in religion, or hometown,
or job or even the family. A nostalgic impulse,
perhaps, when under stress, but actually very
restrictive in the aspirational world.
1. Simon Sinek, Start With Why
How Great Leaders Inspire
Everyone to Take Action
Published 8th January 2010
“It doesn’t matter what you
do, it matters Why you do it.”
With a little discipline, anyone
can learn to inspire. Start With
Why offers an unconventional
perspective that explains
the reasons some leaders
and organizations are more
innovative, more profitable,
command greater loyalties
from customers and
employees alike and, most
importantly, are able to repeat
their success over and over.”
www.startwithwhy.com
2. Viktor E Frankl,
Man’s Search For Meaning.
First published 1946
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s
memoir has riveted generations
of readers with its descriptions
of life in Nazi death camps and
its lessons for spiritual survival.
Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl
labored in four different camps,
including Auschwitz, while his
parents, brother, and pregnant
wife perished. Based on his own
experience and the experiences
of others he treated later in his
practice, Frankl argues that
we cannot avoid suffering but
we can choose how to cope
with it, find meaning in it, and
move forward with renewed
purpose. Frankl’s theory-known
as logotherapy, from the Greek
word logos (“meaning”)-holds
that our primary drive in life
is not pleasure, as Freud
maintained, but the discovery
and pursuit of what we
personally find meaningful.
3. Creating Brand Meaning:
How to Use Brand Vision
Archetypes, Dr Peter Steidl,
2nd Edition, 2012
We are not aware of the vast
majority of signals our brain
processes. Neuroscience
tells us our brain processes
something like 11 million bits
per second and only 40 of these
are processed consciously while
10,999,960 are processed by
our unconscious.

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Brands as shorthand
In our world of dissolving anchors, the
sense of self forms from a much more
fluid world. It is a world in which brands
can help people derive meaning, and in
turn their sense of self. A world where
people start to believe in business and the
meaning business can create. Brands can
help people express who they are, they
can give people a convenient and authentic
shorthand for self-expression. Brands can
become signifiers in their own right.
How brands can be shorthand
for identity
For example, somebody who wants to be
associated with an element of maverick 4
is comfortable in adopting the brands that
express this kind of personality or archetype,
brands like Harley Davidson 5.
On the surface, choosing to associate with
this maverick brand seems like a convenient
shorthand for self expression, but the choice
is actually deeply connected to personal
goals and motivations saying much more
about the person’s life purpose, values and
aspirations than you might expect.
Similarly, somebody who identifies with
the characteristics of the artist 6 might
be excited by a brand like Moleskine 7.
And Harley Davidson and Moleskine can
be drawn on to create a layered, blended
identity that, done well, is regarded as
strongly individual.
Instead of drawing upon traditional fixed
anchors for identity, people can weave
together their own identity using brands
and the meaning they signify as shorthand,
meaningful cues.
How brands can guide action
Brands can be more than mere placeholders
to express identity. They can also guide and
inform how people act and think, again as
a form of shorthand.
For instance, rather than needing to think too
hard about the aesthetic of an artist, cues can
be taken from Moleskine and incorporated
into a person’s life. The Moleskine style, the
Moleskine belief in quality and collaboration.
This shorthand becomes internalised and
reinforces a sense of identity, it gives people
quick suggestions for how to act consistent
with that identity.
Chapter 1 | Introduction
4. The Maverick - Those may
be your rules but they aren’t
mine. I will not blindly obey;
I will not keep my silence. I am
not your sheep, your soldier or
your slave. Do not wrong me,
do not underestimate me and
do not insult me. I never
apologise for what is right.
I celebrate non-conformity.
I dare you to be different
5. Harley Davidson
Purpose: We fulfil dreams
of personal freedom.
Mission: Customers for life...
Harley Davidson values the
deep emotional connection
that is created with our
customers through our
products, services and
experiences. We are fuelled
by the brand loyalty and trust
that our customers place in
us to deliver premium quality
and the promise of fulfilling
lifetime ownership experience.
We exemplify this commitment
by embracing a culture of
personal responsibility and
stewardship or quality in
everything we do. http://www.
harley-davidson.com/content/
h-d/en_AU/company.html
6. The Artist - The true
purpose of creating art is to
leave something behind greater
than yourself. You remember
Van Gogh not for who he was
but for the beauty he gave
the world. Art elevates us
and makes us human; art is
the mark of humanity on the
world. You may not be here
tomorrow but your art will
last a thousand lifetimes.
7. Moleskine
The Moleskine notebook is,
in fact, the heir and successor
to the legendary notebook used
by artists and thinkers over
the past two centuries: among
them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo
Picasso, Ernest Hemingway,
and Bruce Chatwin.
http://www.moleskine.com/
en/moleskine-world
1

6. 6
Chapter 2 | Meaningful Brands
Meaningful Brands
Meaning matters for business.
2
Meaning and self expression
Meaningful brands let people create solid
anchors in an otherwise chaotic world of
swirling messaging and exhortations. They
contribute to wellbeing. Of individuals and
of communities.
A meaningful brand can help people with
self-esteem, self-expression and social
status. The shorthand offered by meaningful
brands ultimately lets people express
themselves more completely. It gives
people a far more nuanced way of
self-expression and identity than any
of the past anchors we as humans have
relied on.
Once a brand becomes and remains
meaningful in this way, it is very difficult
to dislodge in the psyche. The great brands
are meaningful brands, not necessarily
because of their products or services,
but because they stand for something
that matters to people. They are clear
in themselves, they matter.
Meaningful brands have transcended any
sort of conscious, rational judgement and
are desired because they create an
emotional resonance.
Meaning matters for business
because it makes your marketing
more effective
A meaningful brand doesn’t need to
convince people of the features or benefits
of its offering, but instead shows how its
offering contributes to the broader meaning
it is creating. The meaning that people are
openly and willingly enfolding into their
life. The meaning that is contributing to
their sense of identity.
A meaningful brand is marketed
authentically by its audience. The brand
is adopted as part of the audience’s identity,
and they encourage others who share their
values to adopt it. A community forms around
the brand, giving you astounding leverage
over your marketing spend.
A meaningful brand is a brand
people will pay a premium for
People want the meaning that you create
for them, the identity you let them
weave into their own self identity and
self expression. Price is much less
a driving factor when it comes to
meaning, whatever that meaning
might be.
To use our previous examples, Harley
Davidson motorcycles are probably not
the best performing or the cheapest
motorbikes around, but they experience
fanatic loyalty. Similarly, it is possible to
purchase better and cheaper notebooks
than Moleskine, but that’s not the point.
And people will donate money to an
organisation like The Wilderness Society,
an action that is done without any real
direct return.
All of these decisions are irrational when
considered from a transactional framework.
They happen because of how the brand
makes people feel. The identity that people
can wrap around their purchase. And when
that meaning is consistently reinforced
by the brand’s activities, people will continue
to allow the brand to hold a significant place
in their lives, trusting in and believing in what
the brand stands for and its reason to exist.

7. 7
Chapter 2 | Meaningful Brands
8. Meaningful Brands®
is Havas Media Group’s index
that measures the potential
business benefits gained by
a brand when it is seen to
improve our wellbeing and
quality of life. http://www.
meaningful-brands.com/
9. Finite and infinite Games,
James P. Carse published
January 2013.
“There are at least two
kinds of games,” states
James P. Carse as he begins
this extraordinary book.
“One could be called finite;
the other infinite.” Finite games
are the familiar contests of
everyday life; they are played
in order to be won, which is
when they end. But infinite
games are more mysterious.
Their object is not winning,
but ensuring the continuation
of play. The rules may change,
the boundaries may change,
even the participants may
change—as long as the game
is never allowed to come to
an end.
http://www.amazon.com/
Finite-Infinite-Games-James-
Carse/dp/1476731713
2
A meaningful brand is
a valuable brand
A brand’s reservoir of meaning has value,
value that can be represented in money.
It is more profitable, has a higher stock
market valuation, will command
a substantial goodwill if sold.
Havas Media 8 research concludes
that meaningful brands outperform
the stock market by 133%, a significant
financial dividend.
Without meaning, brands enter
the death spiral of transaction
If a brand is not meaningful, then it is only
selling products or services. It is selling
a commodity, and people’s purchasing
decisions will be transactional. This is
a world of ever increasing transactional
competition, a daily tussle that ultimately
becomes a death spiral.
A death spiral that sees companies lock
themselves together in a discounting war.
It’s the not-for-profits that keep ramping
up the guilt in their fundraising campaigns.
The start-ups that promise an incremental
improvement to existing services, the
election campaigns built on fear and cynical
over-promising. It is all debased, degrading
and debilitating to those who participate. And
it destroys value.
Lifting above transaction
The alternative to waging an escalating war
with your competitors is to become deeply
meaningful to your audience.
It is through creating meaning that business
can escape the trenches of transactional
warfare. It is meaning that lets companies
sell, not-for-profits persuade, start-ups grow
and governments be respected. It is meaning
that lets internal culture flourish because
People know exactly what the business
exists to achieve. The deeper meaning
that they contribute to through their day
to day activities.
The Infinite Game of meaning
Rather than permitting a transactional
conversation, create a conversation around
meaning. Rather than being a commodity,
become a reservoir of meaning. Rather than
playing a finite game, play the infinite game
that James P. Carse describes in Finite and
Infinite Games 9.
It’s an alternative that is a longer game.
It’s a game that requires integrity and an
acceptance that you cannot be everything
to everyone. A game played to invest in the
future rather than cash in on the present.
A game that requires clear thought and
deliberate action over a long period of
time. Principled action. Persistent thought.
It’s a game that is played because you want
your business to not just survive, but thrive,
and to thrive for a very long time. By creating
your brand as a reservoir for meaning,
you can be sure that people will keep
coming back to you. Your brand will be front
of mind when people want to buy products
and services because part of their identity
comes from your brand.

8. 8
Chapter 3 | Humanising Brands
Humanising Brands
Meaningful brands are human brands.
3
A brand must be vulnerable
to be meaningful
Meaning is important for brands, vitally
important, but a brand cannot simply
command that it be so. Meaning forms,
it unfolds. It is not imprinted upon the
universe by decree, not demanded.
And so a brand needs to develop
meaning over time, to grow it from a seed,
to let it naturally evolve into something
around which people can wrap their life
and their self identity. That seed is planted
within and nurtured by, connection with
humans. And for a human to connect with
a brand in a similar way to how humans
connect with each other, a brand needs to
overcome the obvious difficulty of being
inhuman and intangible. Unlike a human, it is
difficult to judge a brand’s intentions and so
to empathise with it.
A brand must be deliberate in creating
human connection. It must cultivate
empathy, vulnerability, the ability to step
into the shoes of another. Organisations
are not designed to do this. Instead,
an organisation is designed to be
self-centred, framing the world around
what serves its interests. It needs a big,
deep breath for a brand to decide it is
going to be vulnerable.
A brand must know itself
For a brand to connect with humans,
people need to know what a brand is,
what it stands for. Its identity.
There needs to be some sort of
self-apparent way in which the brand
can contribute to how a person forms
meaning in the world. A brand must
embark on a journey of self-discovery
to know itself. This is thinking deeply
about why the brand exists, what the
greater purpose is that it serves to
achieve. This reason to exist is
central, unchanging, and should be
almost impossible to achieve. It should be
an aspiration that excites everybody around
it. The journey of a brand’s self discovery is
also thinking about the values that the brand
espouses. These values will be the themes
that the brand comes back to again and
again in its communications. They should be
interesting, specific, the sorts of values that
are vibrant and full of life.
Finally, a brand needs to understand its
personality. Archetypes10 are useful tools
here, as they let a brand tap into universal
and innate human understandings of
personality. They make the brand feel
human. Knowing a brand’s archetype
mix enables the brand to communicate in a
way that is consistent, reliable, relatable.
The purpose and the values of a brand need
to explicit if they are to form the seed from
which the brand can become meaningful.
The personality needs to be clearly
demonstrated. And then, once a brand
knows itself, it can communicate in a way
that makes the brand relatable to people.
Brands need to communicate in
a way that empathises with people
A brand needs to have a clear, stable identity,
as well as the ability to step into the shoes
of the people it seeks to connect with.
To know what its audience needs and then
speak to those needs. To become meaningful
to people, to let people feel that the brand is
a part of their own identity. To be something
that feels both solid and filled with meaning,
but also deeply personal and individual.
Vulnerable, empathetic, connected.
Brands can communicate in a way that
encourages empathy. Stories are one
way to do this, as stories are how humans
connect with each other. Sensitively deployed
emotion is another way, a further way is to
draw on all of our senses: sight, sound, smell,
touch and taste.
10. Archetypes are universally
familiar characters that appear
in stories that transcend time,
place, culture, gender and age.
C.G. Jung says archetypes do
not have a well defined shape
‘but from the moment they
become conscious, are namely
nurtured with the stuff of
conscious experience’.

9. 9
Chapter 3 | Humanising Brands
3
Brand identity must
remain central
Regardless of the way in which brands
communicate with empathy, there
needs to be a continued referral back
to a brand’s identity.
Beautiful stories on their own may
get people’s attention, but they will
not contribute to a brand’s meaning.
Emotion and richly sense driven
expression may tantalise, but they
will not make a brand meaningful.
Brands become meaningful where
they are consistent in their identity and
continually empathise with their audience.
Brands become meaningful when they
have meaning and work hard to make
that meaning relevant to people.
To be trusted by humans to form a part
of their identity, to be let into the psyche
of people, a brand must understand the
infinite game of meaning. It must be
vulnerable, it must communicate with
empathy, and it must know and remain
true to its identity.
Brands become meaningful when they
are humanised and given the opportunity
to connect through vulnerability, empathy
and emotion.

10. 10
Chapter 4 | Discussion Topics
4
The Havas Media research
shows that there is a huge
disconnect between people
and brand. Most people would
not care if 74% of all brands
disappeared for good.
What brands are meaningful to you?
What is it that makes them meaningful?
The Havas Media research
shows Meaningful Brands deliver
100% more KPI outcomes, gain,
on average, 46% more share of
wallet and outperform the stock
market by 133%
If meaningfulness delivers positive business
results, how can you find and express your
brand’s meaning?
Sir Bob Geldof talks about
an emerging world where people
believe less in government, and
more in business. 11
Can you imagine what your business looks
like in this world? Where people believe in
your brand?
Discussion Topics
11. Sir Bob Geldof at the Havas
Cafe speaking about the crisis
businesses and brands face.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=YixDC1qN6dY

11. 11
Chapter 5 | Notes
5
Notes
The Lover & The Engineer is dedicated to the creation of meaningful brands.
A meaningful brand is able to connect with its customers on a deeper emotional level.
We offer a variety of workshops, classes, resources and services to help businesses find
and express their meaningfulness.

12. 12
PO Box 1299 West Leederville 6901
www.lover-engineer.com
the business of meaning