I Started Thinking About Branding

My to-do lists are the best. I start with stuff like "clean absolutely," which is code for de-clutter. Get rid of everything that I don't wear anymore, is out of date or no longer "me." I then lob into errands that question how much time I have to leave the house, execute and return--keeping in mind how tired I'll be when I get home. Finally, I stumble into moments of entrepreneurial creativity, where I think about the personal projects I started, such as my gay Asian male webisodes (gamTVusa.com, but pardon the reconstruction, we were hacked a few weeks ago). I've produced about a dozen and I'm wondering about next steps.

My to-do list led me to thinking about branding. If I used my webisodes as a launching pad for a brand, then the money made off of advertising and selling the "stuff" (ironic having brought up clutter) that being a part of that brand would mean to people.

In a single vision, a "ping" moment, I reconnected with what "brand" means to me as a gay, Asian man growing up here in the United States. That glaring, tangible thing was a movie, Ordinary People. Though I grew up in Honolulu, it spoke to me.

The story was about a boy living in a not-so-ordinary, affluent suburb of Chicago. (Another irony is that I live in Chicago now.) He was the surviving son from a boating accident that killed his older brother. The older brother was the shining star of the family, with the surviving brother having always been content to live his life as a shadow. After the accident, the mom, dad and son are crippled as a unit and the boy struggles with his own self-inflicted wounds but during the film, claws his way into a new light. Along the way, he becomes open and vulnerable, helped tremendously--here's the gay part--by a warm, wise, bear of a psychologist. Good Will Hunting has a similar storyline.

The moments of tenderness and discovery between the boy and the psychologist still drive into my core.

I read the book, rooted for the movie during the Academy Awards, loved to hate Mary Tyler Moore, wanted a big warm Cardigan sweater that the actor Judd Hirsch wore playing the psychiatrist and will always, always remember those feelings.

As I think about what branding is and why we do it, I'm drawn to what motivates us as people, our need for love, acceptance, comfort, family. It makes us do things so we can have the basics, but more than that, it drives us to discover and express who we are. Building a brand is merely the foundation necessary to keep the idea of a brand alive. Beyond the necessities, brands are symbols of the fire inside of us, what stokes it, what it eats and its beauty as it rages.

It's a merry circle, creating brand. I'm creating a brand to sell stuff, to generate an ongoing stream of capital, so I can fulfill my ultimate passion--recreating that Ordinary People moment for myself and to share it with people like me.