(This blog also appears at sticknz.net)

Michael Margolis, chief instigator at Get Storied in a Brand Storytelling 101 blog makes the following point.

1. When we name something, our relationship with it transforms

His first example has an agricultural flavour.

“If a cow is given a name by her owner, she generates more milk than a cow that’s treated as an anonymous member of the herd,” according to a research study by Newcastle University.

Margolis goes on:

Names provide us with purpose and direction, often revealing the inner purpose and destiny we are expected to fill. Those names impart an energetic connection that shapes us. When you name the people, creatures and places around you, your connection with the universe is strengthened, all through the stories you tell.

Brands operate in a similar way. A brand represents the complex emotional relationship between the storyteller – the one who is sharing something about that brand – and the audience. Put in a more traditional context, a brand represents the emotional relationship between a consumer and a product.

For all the above reasons, this is why NZ Inc should brand our method of responsible pastoralism.

We can capture the hearts and minds (and wallets) of consumers who care, by connecting with their emotions.

We can get off the commodity treadmill differentiating ourselves from much less pleasant and picturesque means of producing protein.

We can reinvent ourselves….but only if we give ourselves permission to think differently about what it is we offer the world. (Clue, it is vastly more than a piece of meat or a dairy ingredient in someone else’s product).

No one has laid claim to the pasture-based system of working in harmony with nature.

We can – and to reiterate Margolis’ words:

When we name something, our relationship with it transforms.