The brand formula helps us to visualize critical factors of the brand story. It helps us visualize brand identity complexity on one page. The brand formula does not represent the essence of a brand. The brand has no essence. Living (complex) systems have no essence. The branding standard model formula simulates complexity but has to be understood as frozen in a specific time/space moment. That means the brand formula represents brand identity, not the brand itself. The brand is alive and is, as such, closer to the story than to the brand formula. Brand stories emerge from the brand formula element’s permutations.

Let me explain the last sentence. Brand formula as a frozen representation of brand identity has nine elements. The Special Standard Branding Model procedure typically brings a couple of expressions of each of the nine elements. While Vision, for instance, should come as one factual statement, it is preferred to have not less than three fundamental values but, at the same time, not more than 5. On the other hand, there are as many functional promises as products or services within the brand. But in any case, finally, we get a limited number of brand identity propositions. And from here on, life begins. How?

Imagine how many sentences you can make out of 30 or 50 elements using auxiliary and ballast words. Limited but incredibly vast number. Not all sentences would make sense, but many of them would, by definition, set meaningful brand stories. If the storyteller sticks with brand identity elements as unavoidable elements of the story, then the result should be a brand story by definition.

In brand identity development, I take this simple truth also in another direction. Suppose the story that is knitted (another world for mathematical permutation) from brand identity elements does not make strong sense. In that case, this is the sign the brand elements do not represent a brand, or in the worst case, that brand itself is not focused.

Please note that being focused does not mean having USP. Extremely complex entities can be highly focused but, at the same time, also not obsessed with USP.

But even brand stories can not represent the brand in their complexity. Brand emerges from the interaction between a subject (brand consumer) and brand moments of truth. Moments of truth are points where the user experiences the brand. The brand does not exist but through moments of truth. Outside those moments, the brand is pure potential. So brand formula represents a picture of the brand’s potential values that can be actualized through user experience. Since each user is a unique, complex system, each actualization differs from another. The brand formula is the most straightforward tool that helps us to manage brands.

As mentioned many times in this blog: each identity in the memetic world is, at the same time, already a brand. He said that we also consider that each memetic reality follows simple rules explained in this blog. Since people are differentiated from the rest of the biotic environment only by memetic nature, we can say that everything that can be defined as a human could or should be explained through brand identity principles and brand story execution.

This is the shortest possible story about the brand, brand identity and brand actualization. Brandlife (2016) reveals this story in full.