What Is Your Best Childhood Memory?

Gavin Heaton at Servant of Chaos (now that is a great name) blog makes a fantastic point when he asks this post's question "What is your best childhood memory?"

He elaborates in his post "What's Your Brand's Tag?:

"What is your best childhood memory? To explain to me, you need to tell a story. You will have told this story to yourself many times over the years. It will have been reinforced. Changed. Revised with new insight and knowledge. But it isthe story that captures the ESSENCE of the experience. And this is why messaging is still important -- it provides a framing device around which (hopefully) people will interpret their experience with your brand."

I would expand Gavin's point to say that when brandtelling your company/product/services story it is important to remember that there are actually many different stories that comprise your "brand." Stories about customers, stories about products -- maybe even stories from your childhood.

If I ask you what brand of peanut butter you eat today at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60... I can safely bet that it has not changed in decades. In fact, it is almost surely the same brand that you or your spouse (a major influencer) ate as a child. For me, even saying peanut butter brings back strong memories of school lunches in a large all-purpose gym/auditorium/lunch room. I can see the tables, smell the smells.

As Gavin says, "it is the story that captures the ESSENCE of the experience." OK, now I'm hungry.