For the next 15 days, I’m going to participate in Reverb 10. It’s an open online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead. We’re connected by the belief that sharing our stories has the power to change us.
Today’s prompt – NEW NAME: Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?
I’m going to take a little bit of a different path for today’s prompt. It doesn’t inspire me in a literal sense. But it does allow me to formally introduce a few new things to you, namely an evolved brand and point of view. These are things I’ve been thinking about and working on for awhile now, but I’ve been waiting for the right time to roll them out. I’m taking this prompt as the signal that now is the opportune time.
First on the brand – I’m a big believer in establishing consistency with your brand. Brands – especially new brands – take time to form, and their evolution is natural. But in my opinion, they must remain consistent to gain/maintain credibility and sustain themselves over time. This means the look/feel, the voice, the tone, the personality, and the messages can’t stray too far from what they originated from, or else people will either a) get confused and not know which brand they believe in b) question too much whether or not something is wrong with the brand because it’s changing so drastically and/or c) never remember what the brand is all about. There’s always a fine line to walk, particularly with older, more established brands, between staying where they originated and evolving too much, especially to the point where no one can keep up with them.
I don’t want to do that, but I feel like my brand has matured over the last year due to a good length of time thinking about and studying the space. So, I want to grow with it, and at the same time, guide it to remain consistent with its origin. That said, let me introduce to you the new 11th Screen logo:
The inspiration is tied directly to my evolved POV. I’ve always felt like we’re in this wide open space called Out of Home and now, more than ever, technology has affected it to the point of few limitations. I don’t think you can put a “screen” label on it because everything’s a screen. It’s just a matter of whether or not it’s been turned “on.”
The depth of this world is fascinating and full of potential because there are so many ways that the physical spaces/things around us can be connected to the virtual world of information/each other. It’s this in-between world – beyond “digital” Out of Home and not as far as the Internet of Things – where engaging experiences can, and are, taking place. And it’s a world full of dimension.
I started the year out with the experience and intuition that meaningful engagement can happen outside of the home. But my thinking was tied to an actual screen. No more. The beauty about this space is that technology has enabled everything to become a screen and in a large sense, the people are the network. We’re connected with each other more than ever and it doesn’t matter where we are, we’re finding more and more access to the things we want, when we want, how we want them. And I’m not talking about advertisements. I’m talking about experiences.
It’s these experiences that led me to latch onto the idea of engagement Out of Home. And this is really something that I want to dig in and explore even further in the coming year.
So, it’s not an entirely different POV, but an evolved POV. A purposeful evolution. And I hope now and in the coming weeks, that you’ll see this evolution through everything about my brand. I’m excited about the year to come and I’m looking forward to another phase of the journey. I hope you guys find it as exciting as I do.