Suresh Dinakaran's Blog

 

“ Sadness isn’t always a sign that something went wrong- Sometimes it’s a sign that something went right “.

 

At the cost of becoming unpopular, let me assert that if you’re not sad sometimes, you’re not actually living. Here’s the neuroscience, philosophy, and poetry that proves it.

 

We’ve been sold a lie, a glossy, Instagram-filtered falsehood that happiness is the default setting. That sadness is a system error, a glitch in the matrix of a well-lived life. We treat it like an unwanted guest, frantically spraying the emotional equivalent of air freshener to mask its scent.

But what if I told you that the scent isn’t something rotting? It’s the aroma of a deeply lived-in life. That sadness isn’t always a sign that something went wrong. Sometimes, my dear, it’s a roaring, tear-streaked, heart-clutching sign that something went profoundly right.

Let’s reframe the narrative, shall we?

 

The Persian poet Rumi wrote: “Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

 

Maybe sadness is the soul’s way of genuflecting before what was holy. Maybe tears are just love that doesn’t know where else to go. Maybe the ache in your chest isn’t a malfunction—it’s your heart’s way of saying, ” This mattered. This mattered so much that I will never be the same.”

 

And isn’t that exactly the sign that something went magnificently, devastatingly, beautifully right?

 

So the next time sadness visits—not the clinical kind, but the sacred kind—don’t slam the door. Ask it: “What are you protecting? What are you honoring? What truth are you trying to tell me?“

 

There are days when the heart feels like a rain‑drenched street — reflective, quiet, cluttered with yesterday’s footprints. And yet, somewhere in that puddle of melancholy, lies a shimmer of truth: sadness doesn’t always mean a collapse; sometimes it signals a completion. A season ended because it was meant to.

 

What if you felt sad not because you lost something, but because you truly experienced it? Fully. Fiercely. Finally.

 

Because sometimes, sadness isn’t the problem. Sometimes, it’s the proof.

 

We have all been through it. Close encounters of the soul kind.

 

Sometimes sadness is gratitude’s quieter cousin. The lump in your throat when your child steps onto a flight to college. The silence after the applause fades at a performance you nailed. That odd stillness after a breakup you both knew was inevitable—not because you failed, but because you finally learned.

 

Pain here isn’t punishment. It’s punctuation. The period after a beautiful, honest sentence.

 

Because to feel sadness means you cared. It means you dared to invest emotion in something ephemeral. It means you participated. The numb don’t feel sad—they just exist like unbothered mannequins in an air‑conditioned showroom. But you—you lived, loved, listened, risked. And that’s why the soul sends you that saline invoice. It’s the tax of having tasted meaning.

 

So the next time sadness tiptoes in uninvited, don’t slam the door. Offer it tea. Let it sit. Listen to what it’s saying—it’s often whispering, “You’ve grown.”

 

An astronaut once said he felt the deepest ache…not when he left Earth,
but when he saw it from above— knowing he may never see it that way again. That’s not loss. That’s awe masquerading as a tear.

 

A teacher smiles, watery-eyed, as her last batch graduates. Her sadness isn’t about endings. It’s about impact. It’s the exquisite pain of having mattered.

 

A tree that sheds its leaves isn’t dying—it’s evolving. Sadness often signals the same: growth completing its cycle.

 

It’s the emotional interest you’re earning on an investment of love. The pain of separation is directly proportional to the beauty of the connection. If it didn’t hurt to say goodbye, what would that say about your hellos? This sadness is the shadow cast by a very large, very real monument of affection in your life. Cherish the ache; it means you built something magnificent.

 

Sadness isn’t a failure—it’s emotional evidence that you showed up fully.

 

Ever listened to a piece of music—a raga, a flamenco piece, a blues song—that is so heartbreakingly beautiful it brings tears to your eyes? Or read a poem that feels like it’s speaking the secret language of your soul?

That is not depression. That is elevation.

You are feeling the profound gap between the mundane and the magnificent. The artist held up a mirror to a depth of human experience you recognize but rarely touch. The sadness you feel is a form of resonance, a tuning fork in your soul vibrating at a frequency of sublime truth. It’s a sign that your humanity is fully operational, that you haven’t been numbed by the drone of the daily grind.

 

The first step to emotional intelligence is to stop seeing sadness as the enemy. Greet it. Ask it, “What are you here to teach me?” You’ll be amazed at the answers. Net net: let’s stop pathologising our pain.

 

Sadness means you showed up. You loved deeply. You risked greatly. You felt profoundly. That’s a high score in the game of life, not a low one. Thats the Credit Score for your Courage.

 

Don’t build a shrine for your sadness. Acknowledge it, learn from it, offer it a cup of tea, and then let it be on its way. It’s a visitor, not a tenant. Let it move through you, not into you. 

 

So the next time you feel that familiar tug of sorrow, don’t reach for the panic button. Reach for your perspective. Look that feeling in the eye and say, “Ah, I see. Something here mattered. Something was right.”

Your heart isn’t breaking. It’s just stretching, making more room for the incredible, complex, and breathtaking tapestry of your one, wild life.

 

 

We love to be noticed—but preferably without being caught trying. We want to look humble. Loudly.

 

We’re not wired to reject applause. But we can choose what we applaud ourselves for.

 

Watch a traveller at a boarding gate. The guy who elbowed his way into “priority boarding” for a two-hour flight will later complain about legroom to the universe on Instagram. In the same lifetime, he’ll tiptoe into a church, looking for the safest pew at the very back—somewhere humility can be faked from a holy distance.

 

Then, once the lights dim and the spotlight swivels to “open mic night,” he clears his throat and steps right into the beam—hoping the applause wipes off his contradictions.

 

That’s us: human beings in perpetual tug-of-war between status and substance, being seen and being meaningful.

 

We crave visibility like plants crave sunlight—but we forget that too much sun burns.

 

We are all, in our own ways, scrambling for the front seat, the back seat, and the spotlight. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a human operating system that’s about 200,000 years old, screaming for tribal validation.

But what if we’re measuring the wrong damn things?

 

The other day I watched a man at Starbucks spend seven minutes explaining to the barista—and anyone within earshot—how he likes his coffee. Not just extra hot or light foam. A full treatise. Temperature specifications. Milk-to-espresso ratios. The philosophical underpinnings of his relationship with caffeine.

 

The barista’s name tag said “Trainee.” And I thought: We’ve all been this guy.

 

Maybe not about coffee. Maybe about our LinkedIn headline. Or how we angle ourselves in the Zoom grid. Or the exact moment we drop our college name into conversations (IIT/IIM/Harvard—deployed like a surgical strike, maximum impact, minimal context).

 

There’s that old line that nails us all: “Everyone wants the front seat of a plane, the back seat of a Church, and the centre of attention.”

 

Attention: Yes, we need it. Because,  the human brain is literally wired for social recognition. When someone validates us, our ventral striatum lights up like Diwali in Delhi. Same neural pathway as cocaine, by the way. (No wonder Instagram feels the way it does).

 

Lets understand the flip side of it though- it’s both essential and toxic. Like salt. Like sunlight. Like your cousin’s unsolicited life advice.

 

The sweet spot isn’t in renouncing attention, nor in bingeing on it.
It’s in earning gravity. When gravity replaces vanity, your presence wins even when you’re not on stage.

 

Find that patch of ground where silence commands more respect than spectacle. Where your work speaks louder than your home theatre.

 

You can be visible—for the right verbs. Strive to be significant, not seen. Impact is the only spotlight that doesn’t flicker. Don’t chase applause; engineer aftermath.

 

Everyone wants the spotlight. Few realise it melts wax.

 

We’re a curious species, aren’t we?

We crave comfort, but also sanctity. We want spotlight, but with a dimmer switch — just enough glow to make our halo visible.

 

Everyone wants the front seat of the plane.
The one with legroom, priority boarding, and champagne on tap. But when turbulence hits, even the pilot wishes for the aisle near the exit.

 

Everyone wants the back seat of the Church.
Close enough to salvation, far enough from the sermon.
It’s the spiritual equivalent of “seen attending.”
God, yes. Guilt, no thanks.

 

And everyone — oh everyone — wants the centre of attention.
That magnetic midpoint between relevance and reverence.
Where eyes turn, heads nod, hearts double-tap.

 

But here’s the body blow — you can’t be in all three places at once. Not on any map that matters.

 

What if the real centre of attention is attention itself? Not the kind you get, but the kind you give.

 

When you walk into a meeting — and actually listen.
When you show up to serve, not just to be seen.
When you build something that outlasts your LinkedIn headline.

 

Because here’s the truth no algorithm tells you:
Applause fades. Attention shifts. Algorithms forget.
But impact compounds. Quietly.

 

Some inspiring examples to count on:-

 

The janitor at NASA who, when asked what he did, said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” He wasn’t in the front seat of the rocket, but history remembers his purpose.

 

The sound engineer who made Freddie Mercury’s voice echo through eternity. No camera, all craft.

 

The tea seller outside the Supreme Court, who knows every lawyer by name, but never interrupts a client call. His EQ > any MBA.

 

The teacher who didn’t have an Instagram, but whose students now run the world.

 

These aren’t front seats. They’re foundations.

 

So, what do we take away?

 

Redefine applause. Let it come from the mirror, not the crowd.

 

Curate your noise. Speak less, mean more.

 

Trade seats. Sit where contribution feels most uncomfortable—that’s where growth is boarding.

 

Don’t chase the centre of attention. Become the axis of impact.

 

Be so relevant, you don’t need to trend.

 

Brand USA: Do you think the Land Of The Free Has A Branding Problem?

 

What happens when the world’s most powerful brand starts looking unsure of its own tagline? When The Land of the Free starts sounding like The Land of the Frayed?

 

America, the ultimate brand story, wasn’t built on clever copy or viral campaigns. It was built on four timeless values — Freedom, Opportunity, Dignity, Rights. Imperfectly practiced, yes. Fiercely believed, absolutely. The founding script, inked not for profit but for posterity, turned an idea into identity. And that identity became export-grade — from Coca-Cola to NASA, Disneyland to Apple, Levi’s to Lady Liberty herself.

 

It had all the hallmarks of a great brand- a brilliant story of origin, the quintessential stars and stripes, the landmarks(both architectural and historical), a national anthem that reverberates both in mind and soul and the incredible gravitas to sell a dream to the rest of the world for decades.

 

Where are we now? I need not stick my neck out to say that Brand USA has a severe identity crisis today.

 

Pop icon Bruce Springsteen immortalised it when he said, “We are lost. We’ve lost so much in so short a time.”

 

Here’s the thing about great brands—they don’t fail because they run out of money. They fail because they run out of meaning. And right now, Brand USA is hemorrhaging meaning faster than a Super Bowl ad budget.

 

Let’s talk about what happens when iconic brands lose their way. Not collapse. Not disappear. Just… drift.

 

Nike did it in the ’90s when it became more about stock prices than soul. Apple did it in the wilderness years when it forgot computers were supposed to delight people, not just compute. Starbucks did it when “third place” became “forty-seventh identical location.”

 

And Brand USA? It’s doing it right now.

 

But here’s the twist that should fill all of us with hope rather than dread: Every single one of those brands came roaring back. Not by shouting louder. Not by spending more. By remembering who they were supposed to be in the first place.

 

Lets go back in time to the brand promise of Brand USA: Strip away the mythology, the flag-waving, the foam fingers, and what you have is one of history’s most audacious brand propositions:

 

Freedom. Opportunity. Dignity. Rights.

 

Not perfect. Not even close. Flawed and complicated and riddled with contradictions from day one. But revolutionary nonetheless. The founding documents read less like governance manuals and more like the world’s first purpose-driven brand manifesto.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

 

That’s not policy. That’s poetry. That’s a brand promise that made people cross oceans, risk everything, believe in something bigger than themselves.

 

The product hasn’t changed. The promise is still there, carved in marble and parchment. What’s changed is the trust. And trust, as any brand strategist will tell you, is the only currency that actually matters.

 

It might seem like a magic potion but it is not. Iconic brands have won back lost glory.

 

Brand resurrection stories that nobody wants to hear: It doesn’t happen in boardrooms. It happens in living rooms. In town halls. In coffee shops and comment sections and conversations between strangers who decide to stop treating each other like enemies.

 

Brand USA’s problem isn’t messaging. It’s listening.

 

The greatest brand turnarounds in history share one thing: they stopped marketing at people and started hearing from them. They got radically honest about the gap between promise and reality. They admitted the emperor’s new clothes were actually a torn T-shirt.

 

Consider this: When Domino’s admitted their pizza tasted like cardboard and rebuilt from scratch—sales soared. When Tylenol faced a crisis and chose transparency over spin—they became more trusted than before. When LEGO almost went bankrupt and rediscovered their core purpose—they became the world’s most valuable toy brand.

 

The pattern? Honesty. Consistency. Humanity.

 

Contrary to the understanding that the majority might have, and which no marketing playbook would be ready to articulate, BrandUSA is NOT owned by politicians or pundits or talking heads on screens. It’s owned by 330 million brand custodians who wake up every day and decide what this brand actually means.

 

Want examples? They’re everywhere.

 

The teacher in Oklahoma who spends her own money on school supplies because she believes in the promise of equal opportunity. The entrepreneur in Detroit turning urban blight into urban farms. The programmer in Austin creating tools to make government more transparent. The volunteers in North Carolina rebuilding after hurricanes, not because they were told to, but because that’s what neighbors do.

 

The Marine who served three tours and now mentors at-risk kids. The immigrant who opened a restaurant and employed thirty people. The teenager organizing voter registration drives. The retired couple fostering their seventh child.

 

These people aren’t marketing Brand USA. They’re being Brand USA.

 

They’re not perfect either. None of us are. But they’re showing up, doing the work, living the values that made this brand matter in the first place. They’re the proof of concept. The walking testimonials. The reason this brand is worth saving.

 

Let’s introspect(and be uncomfortable for a moment). Great brands in crisis don’t just slap on a new coat of paint and call it transformation. They do the hard work of self-examination. They ask questions that have no easy answers:

 

Where did we compromise our values?
Who did we leave behind?
When did we start believing our own hype instead of delivering on our promise?
What would it look like to actually mean what we say?

 

This isn’t about left or right. This isn’t about red or blue. This is about a brand that promised freedom and opportunity realizing that those words ring hollow when massive chunks of the customer base feel neither free nor full of opportunity.

 

It’s about a brand that wrote “all men and women are created equal” and is still, centuries later, trying to figure out if it actually meant “all.”

 

The reflection isn’t weakness. It’s the prerequisite for strength. You can’t fix what you won’t face.

 

Story first, slogans second. ALWAYS.

 

Perhaps this is where most brands get it backwards. They think a clever tagline will save them. A viral campaign. A celebrity endorsement. A Super Bowl spot.

 

Brand USA doesn’t need a new slogan. It needs new stories. True ones.

 

The story of the Sikh community in California feeding wildfire victims. The story of Republicans and Democrats working together to fix crumbling infrastructure in their county because potholes don’t have party affiliations. The story of the church and the mosque sharing a parking lot and organizing joint food drives.

 

The story of the conservative farmer and the liberal professor discovering they both want their kids to inherit a livable planet. The story of the cop and the protester having coffee and realizing they both want the same thing: safe communities where everyone belongs.

 

These aren’t Hallmark movies. These are happening right now. They’re just drowned out by the noise machine that profits from division.

 

Great brands amplify the stories that matter. They don’t manufacture sentiment. They surface truth.

 

The turning point for Brand USA won’t come from Washington. It won’t come from Silicon Valley or Wall Street or Hollywood.

 

It’ll come when enough citizens decide they’re tired of being marketed to and start demanding something real. When they stop outsourcing their citizenship to politicians and reclaim it for themselves. When they realize that democracy isn’t a spectator sport and brand stewardship isn’t someone else’s job.

 

It’ll happen when we stop talking at each other through screens and start talking with each other as human beings. When we treat disagreement not as betrayal but as the natural friction of people who care about different aspects of the same shared brand.

 

When we remember that we’re not customers of Brand USA. We’re not even just citizens.

 

We’re co-creators. Stakeholders. The brand itself.

 

When the needle moves from marketing to movement.

 

If you permit me to state the obvious here- Cut through all the complexity and you find that iconic brands, the ones that endure, share a few simple truths:

 

They’re honest. They admit mistakes. They close the gap between what they say and what they do. They understand that credibility is built in millimeters and destroyed in miles.

 

They’re consistent. Not static—consistent. They evolve without abandoning their core. They adapt without betraying their essence. They know that trust is built through repeated proof.

 

They’re human. They remember that behind every transaction, every interaction, every touchpoint is a person with fears and dreams and a desire to belong to something meaningful.

 

Brand USA has been all three at its best. It can be again.

 

The path forward isn’t easy. Yet, it is simple.

 

Because citizenry is a two way contact sport, not a spectator sport.

 

Because, Brand USA isn’t broken beyond repair. It’s battered, bruised, trust-depleted, and desperately in need of a reality check. But the fundamentals are still there. The infrastructure. The talent. The diversity of thought and background and experience that is, ironically, both the challenge and the competitive advantage.

 

When success is measured not by how well one group is doing but by how well all groups can thrive. When “freedom” is understood not as freedom from each other but freedom for each other to pursue their version of the American dream.

 

The question isn’t whether Brand USA can make a comeback.

 

The question is: Are the citizens there willing to be a part of it?

 

Not by posting. Not by arguing. Not by waiting for someone else to fix it.

 

By being the brand you want to see. By embodying the values you claim to cherish. By treating fellow citizens not as enemies in a zero-sum war but as stakeholders in a shared future.

 

The land of the free has a branding problem. But every great branding problem is really a people problem. And people, when they decide to, can change anything.

 

The eagle is still flying. It’s just waiting for us to remember where we’re supposed to be going.

 

And that, my friends, is how iconic brands come back.

 

Common sense has put in its papers. We can call it the Great Resignation!

 

We’re living in the age of perpetual dissatisfaction. Your college friend just posted about their “life-changing” move to Bali. Your LinkedIn feed is a never-ending parade of people who “took the leap” and “never looked back.” Your cousin’s startup just got funded. Your ex just got promoted.

 

And you? You’re standing in your yard, staring at literally everyone else’s grass.

 

Here’s the reading between the lines though: that grass over there? It’s mostly filter, fertilizer, and fiction.

 

The job that looks perfect from LinkedIn? It comes with a boss who micromanages breathing patterns. The “digital nomad lifestyle”? It’s glamorous until you’re fighting with customer service in a language you don’t speak because your laptop died and took your livelihood with it. The relationship that seems effortless? They’re just better at hiding the arguments about whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher.

 

And you still go…the grass is greener…

 

Time to stop playing victim. The problem isn’t your job, your city, your relationship, or your circumstances. The problem is you’ve been a terrible gardener.

 

Irrespective of your mailing address, imagine you getting a telegram from your self twenty years into the future. What would the content on it say?

 

Highly unlikely that it would be saying ” Dude, you should’ve compared yourself to more people on social media.” I am betting that it wouldn’t be saying “Man, I wish we’d jumped ship more often.” It is safe to guess what it would be saying- it would say something like: “That thing you had? It was pretty good. Wish you’d noticed while you were living it.”

 

The grass isn’t greener on the other side. It’s greener where you point the damn hose.

 

No sermon here please. So, certainly I am not telling you to stop dreaming, stop wanting more, stop aspiring to better things.

 

Some grass is dying. Some jobs are toxic. Some relationships are over. Some cities are wrong for you. I’m not suggesting you water dead grass—I’m suggesting you learn the difference between grass that needs water and grass that needs burial.

 

The question isn’t “Should I stay or should I go?” The question is “Have I actually tried?”

 

Have you watered this grass? Have you fertilized it? Have you given it morning sunlight and afternoon shade? Have you protected it from pests and pulled the weeds?

 

Or have you just stood here, looking over the fence, wondering why everyone else’s yard is better?

 

The moment you start watering, you stop comparing. The moment you stop comparing, you start growing.

 

And the moment you start growing, you look back and realize the grass was always good enough—you were just too busy staring at fences to notice.

 

Now put down your phone, pick up your watering can, and tend to what you’ve got.

 

The grass is waiting. And it’s thirstier than you think.

The question here is a no-brainer. When did we all stop tending our own lawns?

Professionally, personally, emotionally — we’re always peeking over the fence.

The neighbour has a better brand, a shinier title, a more “creative” team, a dog that poses better on Instagram. (Dogs, by the way, never compare lawns. They own every patch.)

 

Let’s be honest — we’ve outsourced joy to geography.

We tell ourselves that happiness, opportunity, or meaning lives elsewhere. Another company. Another relationship. Another city. Another start-up.
But the truth is brutally simple: greener doesn’t mean better; it means watered.

 

When you show up every day for your own patch — even with a leaky hose, muddy shoes, and patchy sunshine — something remarkable happens. Grass doesn’t just grow; gratitude grows.

Ideas root deeper. Work feels less like a pilgrimage for applause and more like play. And slowly, your patch stands out — not because it’s smoother, but because it’s real.

 

So, forget the neighbor’s lawn. Your grass is waiting for a drink. Euphemism NOT intended!

 

We don’t look for inspiration anymore. We look for irrigation.

 

It’s not about blind positivity or settling for less. It’s about a strategic shift from coveting to cultivating. Perhaps it’s time to trade your binoculars for a watering can. Stop staring at other people’s gardens. Every minute spent in envy is a minute not spent watering your own plot. Redirect that energy. Inward.

 

The universe doesn’t hand out green lawns. It hands out seeds, soil, and a whole lot of weather. The greenness—the joy, the success, the peace—is entirely dependent on the gardener. On you.

Stop looking over the fence. Your own patch of earth is right beneath your feet, desperate for a drink. Go on. Water it.

 

We humans practice selective amnesia. It’s a craft that we have mastered.

 

Lest we forget; Everyone wants greener grass. Almost no one wants to drag the hose.

 

Everyone wants the bloom. Few are willing to stand through the muddy season.

 

Everyone wants the “overnight success” but conveniently skips the fact that night is usually 5,000 days long.

 

The “other side” is a mirage built on maintenance.

 

Here’s an inspiring example- none other than The Beatles. Before the world screamed, “Beatlemania!”, they were four broke lads sweating it out in Hamburg’s smoky nightclubs, playing 7-hour sets to half-drunk sailors.
Those nights were the watering.

 

The concerts, the Grammys, the hysteria — just the spring bloom.

 

We live in a time where people Photoshop even their productivity.
Everything’s curated, cropped, filtered, optimized for engagement. Here’s the much overlooked curveball though- the deeper you water your roots, the less you need to market your leaves. Because authenticity is the only fertilizer that works long-term.

 

Water, water, everywhere….

 

Water your curiosity — it grows wisdom.

 

Water your gratitude — it grows joy.

 

Water your craft — it grows credibility.

 

Water your relationships — they grow roots.

 

Everything else is weather. Period. Because,  every dream dies of dehydration before it dies of doubt.

 

If you hate the process of watering, you’ll never stick with it. Find a way to love the act of tending to your own life. The satisfaction of getting better, the peace of routine, the quiet pride of building something that is authentically yours. Find the joy in the gardening itself.

 

So. That pristine grass you’re coveting? It’s probably AstroTurf. And even if it’s real, you’re not seeing the back-breaking labor, the fertilizer (metaphorical and otherwise), and the sheer number of dead patches they’ve carefully cropped out of the frame.

The ancient, overused, and profoundly misunderstood proverb needs a 21st-century upgrade. The grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. And it is hose good as it gets!

 

Where we trade not goods — but goodwill, wisdom, and what’s next. Welcome to the State of the Heart Business. Welcome to the World’s Town Square. Welcome to LinkedIn.

 

Here’s the observation that changes everything. LinkedIn is the business world’s town square.

 

Let that marinate for a moment. Not a marketplace. Not a billboard. Not even a networking event. A town square—that ancient, sacred space where communities gathered, ideas collided, merchants traded, and reputations were forged or shattered before sundown.

 

But here’s where it gets delicious: This town square has 1 billion citizens, operates 24/7 across every timezone, and remembers every conversation you’ve ever had. Geography didn’t just become irrelevant—it became history. The geography is history. The community is the currency.

 

Remember when doing business meant being in the right city, at the right club, knowing the right people? LinkedIn looked at that antiquated model and said, “What if we democratized access to everyone, everywhere, all at once?”

 

And just like that, geography became history.

 

Today, a startup founder in Bangalore can pitch to a venture capitalist in Boston before breakfast. A freelance designer in Lagos can land a client in London by lunch. A thought leader in Mumbai can influence decision-makers in Manhattan by midnight. The sun never sets on LinkedIn’s town square, because business never sleeps when the entire world is your neighborhood.

 

LinkedIn didn’t just connect professionals. It obliterated the tyranny of proximity. In the old world, your network was limited by your zip code. In LinkedIn’s world, your network is limited only by your value proposition.

 

Here’s the mouth-watering paradox- it’s professional enough to be taken seriously, but human enough to be engaging. It’s buttoned-up enough for the C-suite, but accessible enough for the intern.

 

While other platforms became minefields of controversy, LinkedIn became the Switzerland of social media—neutral ground where business conversations happen without the collateral damage of political rants, conspiracy theories, or cat videos (well, mostly).

 

This “safe neutral zone” positioning isn’t accidental. It’s strategic genius. By maintaining professional decorum while allowing personality, LinkedIn created a space where:

 

Trust compounds (unlike virality, which evaporates)

Relationships deepen (not just accumulate)

Reputation builds (brick by brick, post by post)

Revenue follows (because business happens where trust lives)

 

What is worth mentioning is the Brand Alchemy-how LinkedIn made the migration from utility to loyalty. We know that most platforms are tools. LinkedIn became a tribe.

 

The genius of LinkedIn’s brand is that it positioned itself not as a job board (though it does that brilliantly) or a networking site (though it excels there too), but as the professional identity platform. Your LinkedIn profile isn’t just a resume—it’s your business card, portfolio, thought leadership platform, and professional legacy rolled into one.

 

The unique loyalty loop that LinkedIn mastered is worth emulating.

 

Value Creation You share insights → You gain visibility → You build authority → You attract opportunities

Network Effects Your connections see your value → They engage → Their networks see you → Your influence multiplies

Reciprocity Engine You help others → They remember you → Opportunities boomerang back → Relationships compound

Reputation Stacking Consistent presence → Pattern recognition → Brand building → Market positioning

 

This isn’t just social media. This is social capital multiplication.

 

LinkedIn rewards consistency over virality, substance over sensationalism, and value creation over attention extraction. In a world of digital shortcuts, LinkedIn is the long game that actually pays off.

 

LinkedIn’s audience mix is every brand owner and marketer’s Saturday Night Fever dream. Look at some numbers here:-

 

Decision-makers: 61 million senior-level influencers

Affluence: Highest household income of any platform ($75K+ median)

Education: 61% have a college degree (platform average)

Purchase power: 4x larger buying power than average web audiences

 

But, here’s where the rubber hits the road. What makes LinkedIn transcendent: the intentionality.

 

People come to LinkedIn wanting to:

 

Learn about your business

Discover new solutions

Evaluate thought leaders

Make purchasing decisions

Advance their careers

Build professional relationships

 

They’re not mindlessly scrolling. They’re purposefully hunting. That intent transforms marketing from interruption to invitation.

 

Unabashedly, here is a platform where you can demonstrate expertise to decision-makers who need it, exactly when they need it, regardless of where they were.

 

That’s not marketing. That’s matchmaking.

 

If you allow me to state the obvious here: B2B buyers don’t want to be sold to. They want to be educated. LinkedIn is the university where your brand can become the professor everyone wants to learn from.

 

The future of business belongs to those who build relationships at scale while maintaining authenticity at depth. LinkedIn is the only platform designed for exactly that paradox.

 

LinkedIn isn’t finished evolving. The platform that made geography history is now making these moves:

AI-Powered Matching: Smarter connections between buyers and sellers

Video-First Evolution: LinkedIn Live and native video gaining traction

Creator Economy Integration: Monetization tools for thought leaders

Enhanced Analytics: Deeper insights into content performance

Newsletter Features: Building owned audiences within the platform

 

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” – William Gibson. And brand LinkedIn is still evolving.

 

While Twitter became a gladiator arena, Facebook a family reunion gone wrong, and Instagram the vanilla crusader, LinkedIn created the velvet rope experience for business discourse. Demonstrating that safety isn’t boring—it’s bankable. When professionals feel safe to share, they share more. When they share more, trust compounds. When trust compounds, revenue follows like a loyal golden retriever.

 

What is not lost on anyone here is that on Instagram, your ad interrupts someone’s vacation envy. On LinkedIn, your insight interrupts someone’s quarterly planning. Big difference.

 

If ever there was a platform that understood compound interest, this is it. LinkedIn mastered something that most social platforms forgot and never learned: that professional reputation is a long game.

 

Your LinkedIn profile isn’t a mood—it’s a monument. Every post, comment, and connection is a brick in your professional cathedral. This creates unprecedented stickiness.

 

LinkedIn’s most underestimated asset isn’t its algorithm—it’s its generosity culture. Why giving beats grifting hands down. Some (golden) unwritten rules that I learned over time( 12 + years). Exhibit your scars not just your stars. Vulnerability>Vanity. Endorsements and recommendations are social capital. Lift as you climb( send the elevator down as Kevin Spacey would have said). If you can’t add value, add nothing. Commentary, not criticism. Quality over viral vanity. 500 relevant eyeballs beat 50,000 random robots any day.

 

In the LinkedIn town square, your reputation is your resume, your personality is your portfolio, and your generosity is your guarantee.

 

Some vital stats( no, not the one you are thinking of):

 

LinkedIn generates 277% more leads than Meta and Twitter combined (HubSpot).

 

B2B marketers report 97% effectiveness for content distribution (Content Marketing Institute).

 

LinkedIn delivers context, not just clicks. The platform tells you: This person works at a 500+ employee company, in HR, with hiring authority, who just read an article about recruitment automation.

 

Try getting that from a Google search ad.

 

LinkedIn isn’t one product—it’s an ecosystem of inevitability, where the four pillars on which you stand tall include:

 

Profile = Your Digital Handshake
Your always-on, never-sleeping business card that works harder than your sales team.

Network = Your Relationship Rolodex
Not just who you know—who you can reach in two degrees of separation.

Content = Your Thought Leadership Stage
The only platform where posting about “enterprise SaaS governance models” gets engagement.

Premium Tools = Your Competitive Edge
InMail, Sales Navigator, Analytics—the difference between hunting and harvesting.

 

Food for Torque? : Most people treat LinkedIn like a resume repository. Winners treat it like a revenue engine.

 

LinkedIn’s brand moat is premised on the domicile of defensibility through dependability. Here’s how:

 

Why can’t anyone dethrone LinkedIn? Simple: switching costs are existential.

 

Your LinkedIn presence isn’t portable. Your network isn’t transferable. Your reputation isn’t exportable. After investing years building your professional identity, moving to “NewBusinessNetwork.io” would be like burning your house down because you don’t like the wallpaper. Or the kitchen sink.

 

The Strategic Implication: LinkedIn doesn’t just have users—it has digital hostages (in the nicest, most mutually beneficial way possible).

 

LinkedIn isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s not even a should-have. It’s a must-dominate.

 

Because while you’re debating whether to invest time in “another social platform,” your competitor is:

Building relationships with your prospects

Establishing thought leadership in your space

Creating trust before you get the meeting

Shortening sales cycles while you’re still cold calling

The town square is open. The conversations are happening. The business is flowing. The only question:

 

Are you in the square, or are you standing outside wondering where everyone went?

 

In closing: in a world obsessed with hacks, shortcuts, and growth-at-all-costs, LinkedIn rewards something radical: authentic, consistent, value-driven professionalism.

 

It’s not sexy. It’s not instant. It won’t make you TikTok-famous.

 

But it will make you business-essential.

 

And in a world where attention is scattered and trust is scarce, being essential is the only competitive advantage that matters.

 

The next “brand visibility war” won’t be fought on billboards, hashtags, or even human feeds. It’ll be fought in the quiet backend of the web — in the way your data, content, and credibility converse with machines.

 

Because in this new world, if machines don’t know you exist, neither will humans.

 

For years, marketers, brands, and creators obsessed over eyeballs. Reach, engagement, shares. Now, as AI reshapes the flow of online traffic, the first set of eyeballs that see your content aren’t even human — they’re silicon.

 

Welcome to the new frontier: the Age of Machine Visibility. Your next audience isn’t scrolling — it’s scanning.

 

Let that sink in.

 

You’re no longer writing for people. You’re writing for the algorithms that tell people what to read.

 

Now this seems coming from aeons ago. But it is not. Up until recently, Google search was the main highway. You optimized for keywords, backlinks, meta tags — hoping to make the front page.

 

Today? That highway’s getting rerouted. AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Deep Seek etc) are becoming the new gatekeepers of discovery.

 

They summarize the web, repackage your ideas, and decide which voices get cited, referenced, or ignored.

 

In short, your content isn’t just competing for clicks anymore — it’s competing for comprehension.

 

Visibility now depends on how machine-readable, factually consistent, and contextually rich your brand’s story is.

 

What if content marketing as you know it is already dead, and you’re just animating the corpse?

 

What if the future isn’t about creating content humans discover through AI—but creating content for AI to discover humans?

 

Think about it. You’re not trying to get your blog post in front of a prospect. You’re trying to get your thinking into an AI’s training data, so when your prospect has a conversation with that AI, your framework surfaces as “the way smart people think about this problem.”

 

You’re not marketing to humans anymore. You’re seeding the synthetic consciousness layer that mediates all human knowledge work.

 

That’s not dystopian. It’s just different.

 

Credibility now is a machine decision. It used to be about perception. It is now about data validation. If your content doesn’t align with verified data points, trusted sources, and interconnected entities across the web, AI systems may quietly ghost you — not out of malice, but mathematics.

 

Your credibility is being machine-scored in real time. There is a tectonic shift in how reputations are built.

 

The next influencer isn’t viral — it’s verifiable. The next thought leader isn’t loud — it’s linked. The next authority isn’t famous — it’s fetchable.

 

Here’s the contrarian lens on this. As AI floods the internet with infinite content, originality will become premium.  Machines can remix what exists — they can’t originate what doesn’t. So the brands that will in the content brand race would be the ones that offer context-rich storytelling that machines can map; create new data (research, experiments, case studies); build trust trails across multiple sources.

 

It’s no longer “content is king.” It’s “context is kingdom.”

 

Some real-world examples that can both inspire and educate include:-

 

IKEA’s AI ready catalogue– They aren’t just uploading product images anymore. IKEA embeds detailed product metadata, 3D object files, and spatial semantics — so that when AI tools like Midjourney or Google’s Scene Viewer generate room designs, IKEA’s products show up by default.
That’s visibility — without a single ad.

 

The “Linked Data” revolution of the BBC– BBC News quietly restructured its entire archive to be machine-readable — tagging every entity (person, place, event) with contextual metadata. Result? AI assistants now pull BBC references more frequently than competitors. Credibility, engineered.

 

There are some brave brand builders who have got in on the act. They are designing content for comprehension, not consumption. Because, the machine should understand your brand before it recommends it. They are building digital reputation capital. Your credibility will live in databases, not dashboards. Their brand’s digital footprint is a truth trail. Because data transparency is > marketing fluff. Publish the “how” behind your “wow.” They treat AI Systems as AAA( Asset + Ally + Ammunition)- as new stakeholders. And feed them with verifiable data so that they become amplifiers.

 

Content writers used to write for clicks. Now they are writing for cognition. The new kid on the block is AEO(AI Engine Optimisation). Move over SEO. Originality is the new scarcity. Brands that create new data will win.

 

Google has talked about E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for years. For humans, it was a vague guideline. For machines, it’s a measurable scorecard.

 

The era of the “blog post as a traffic magnet” is fading ( Yes, I know you must be wondering what am I doing?). The new goal is to create Knowledge Assets—discrete, reusable, data-rich modules of information that machines can easily comprehend, trust, and redeploy.

 

This isn’t a dystopian future. It’s the present. The flow of traffic is being rerouted through AI concierges. Your job is to make sure your brand is in their good graces.

Stop thinking about “content for humans” and start architecting “truth for machines,” which is then beautifully delivered to humans. The machine is your new editor, your new distributor, and your most influential critic.

Win it over, and it will work for you 24/7/365. Ignore it, and you’re talking to an empty room.

 

Yes, the shoe is on the other foot now. You’ve spent a decade and more learning to write for humans who think like machines. There is twist in the tale: Now you need to write for machines that are learning to think like humans. The game just flipped.

 

Welcome to the post-click economy. Where your content isn’t dying. It’s just being read by entities that don’t need to visit your website, don’t click your ads, and definitely aren’t filling out your lead forms.

 

Your brand’s New Audience (read AI agents retrieving information)–Consume entire corpuses in milliseconds; Extract semantic meaning, not just keywords; Have no emotional attachment or brand loyalty; Never return to your site—they’re always everywhere and nowhere & Leave zero traces you can measure with Google Analytics.

 

The bitter pill to swallow- Your content’s primary reader is now something that doesn’t need your persuasive copy, doesn’t get influenced by your CTAs, and will cannibalize your expertise to serve someone else’s query.

 

It might seem as if you are stuck in this bizarre lingo aka: Write for machines to achieve distribution, but embed enough humanity( read Emotional resonance. Storytelling. Brand personality ) that if a person does encounter your work, they’re moved to act.

 

As we come towards the end of this post, lets look at the ethical minefield that brands will find themselves in. The permission Vs extraction tug-of-war. Where you are between a rock and a hard place which looks something like this:

 

Option A: Let AI consume everything and hope attribution trickles back

 

Option B: Block AI and become irrelevant as human discovery shifts to AI interfaces

 

Option C: Architect a hybrid approach that feeds AI strategically while protecting core IP

 

That said, there’s no clean answer. Just calculated bets.

 

In closing, the internet isn’t becoming less human because AI is taking over. It’s becoming less human because humans are increasingly experiencing the internet through AI intermediaries.

 

Your audience hasn’t disappeared. They’re just behind a one-way mirror, talking to a machine that talks to your content on their behalf.

 

So the question isn’t “How do I get visibility in a world of AI?”

 

The question is: “What part of my value can survive being summarized, and what part requires human connection to unlock?”

 

Figure that out, and you’re not just future-ready. You’re future-proof.

 

In fact, in the case of the former, the results are more assured.

 

Well. I have put it out there and it is no attempt at sacrilege. On the other hand, dare I call it sanity?

 

We stand at the altar of modern life, heads bowed, hands outstretched. Our prayers are a litany of wants: a bigger bonus, a faster car, a quieter mind. We beseech the universe for possessions, believing they are the vessels of our happiness.

But what if we’ve been praying to the wrong gods?

 

Question time folks: when was the last time you truly played? Not watched, not scrolled, not supervised kids from a park bench, but actually played—ran, sweated, laughed till your lungs burnt. If it takes divine intervention to remember, well, Durant already settled the score long ago.

 

Will Durant( Source Fallen Leaves) was not telling us to ask the gods for shiny trinkets or manifest material upgrades. He asked us to plead for things to do—to make, to create, to build. That’s the real Tesla stock. Happiness is not in consuming the unboxing videos of others but in making things with our two hands, two legs, or even two left feet.

 

In Henry David Thoreau’s utopia, each would build his own home. Not Ikea-ed from flat packs, not ordered with one-day delivery, but hand-built. There’s dignity in sweat, melody in muscle. He believed that from that effort, song would flow back to the human heart just as naturally as birds break into chirping when they build their nests. True story: Nature always hums when it works, never when it lazes.

 

We have outsourced our ‘building.’ Our homes are bought, our food is delivered, our entertainment is streamed. We have become expert consumers and novice creators. And we wonder why the song has left our hearts.

 

Now, not all of us can build homes. Some of us can’t even assemble a bookshelf without losing half the screws and our full temper. Thats the reality. But here’s what we can do— walk, run, throw, jump, play.

 

Simple verbs, divine outcomes.

 

Yet what do we do instead? We…watch. We spectate. We prefer shouting at a screen as 22 men chase a ball across green turf. We livestream dopamine. Somewhere along the way, we mistook being entertained for actually living. That’s like confusing food delivery with farming your own field.

 

When the applause dies, what endures? Not the possessions. Not your Netflix queue. What endures is the memory of doing. That late-night gully cricket that ended with broken windows. That dance in the rain. That amateur football match where nobody kept score but everybody kept joy.

 

Maybe that’s the code: prayer keeps hope alive. Play keeps life alive.

 

And maybe life doesn’t really need to balance faith against fun—it needs us to realize they’re the same damn thing. Playing is another form of praying, only with sneakers on. And while prayer asks, play gives. It gives you back to yourself.

Possessions rust. Experiences, sweat, and laughter? They resuscitate the spirit.

 

Worry can never be the substitute for activity. But action can be.

 

We live in an age of spectacular consumption and spectacular sadness. Our shopping carts overflow while our souls remain empty. We collect experiences like trophies, yet feel increasingly hollow. We’ve confused having with being, acquiring with becoming.

 

But there’s an ancient secret hiding in plain sight: The hands that create are never empty, even when they hold nothing.

 

Consider the street musician in Chennai who owns nothing but an old violin, yet radiates more joy than the businessman driving past in his luxury car. The musician is playing—literally and metaphorically. He is engaged in the sacred act of creation, of bringing something beautiful into existence. The businessman is consuming—music through his car speakers, comfort through his seat, status through his vehicle.

 

This could sound contrarian, so be it. What if your life is not a test to be passed, but a playground to be explored?

 

Have you watched a six-year-old build an elaborate fort with cardboard boxes ? For hours, she is completely absorbed—architect, engineer, interior designer, and proud resident all at once. No smartphone can pull her away. No worry can touch her. She is in the zone we adults spend thousands on meditation retreats to find.

 

She isn’t consuming entertainment; she is creating it. She isn’t seeking happiness; she is actively manufacturing it with her hands and imagination.

 

“But I’m too old for cardboard forts,” you might say. Are you? Or have you simply forgotten that age is just a number, but play is a state of mind?

 

You don’t have to dig deep. The most successful people have one thing in common: they’ve turned their work into play and their play into creation. They don’t watch games; they create them. They don’t just consume content; they produce meaning.

 

Take late Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who played with rockets and missiles the way children play with building blocks. His “work” was indistinguishable from his passion because he had discovered the secret: when you’re truly playing, you’re praying with your actions.

 

Every scientist who stays up all night in a lab, every artist who loses track of time while painting, every programmer who debugs code until dawn—they’re all engaged in a form of worship. They’re honoring the creative force within them.

 

We humans are great at missing the wood for the trees.

 

Every hour spent consuming someone else’s creation is an hour not spent on your own. Netflix doesn’t make you Netflix-worthy. Instagram doesn’t make you instantly remarkable. Creation does. Suffice to say that the consumption trap is real.

 

In an AI-driven world, the ability to create with our hands becomes more valuable, not less. Learn to cook, garden, build, craft. These aren’t hobbies; they’re hedges against helplessness. Our hands are our first tools and last hope.

 

The word “recreation” literally means “to create again.” When you play, you’re not wasting time; you’re investing in renewal. The executive who plays tennis doesn’t just get exercise; she gets perspective. Play is the ultimate performance enhancer( or productivity hack if thats the preferred coinage).

 

Your birthdate doesn’t determine your ability to build, only your excuse to avoid building. The youngest billionaire is still learning. The oldest craftsman is still creating. Age is NOT a barrier to play.

 

Next time you see children playing in a park, don’t just smile and move on. Stop. Watch. Learn. Notice how completely absorbed they are, how unselfconscious, how innovative with simple materials.

 

They’re not just playing; they’re praying—offering their complete attention to the moment, creating something from nothing, finding joy in the process rather than the outcome.

 

This is the spiritual technology we’ve (probably) forgotten: Creation is prayer in action. Play is meditation in motion.

 

In this simple shift—from passive consumption to active creation—lies a secret so profound, it can redefine a lifetime. It leads us to an irresistible conclusion: ‘Let us play’ is as good as ‘Let us pray.’ And often, the results are far more assured.

 

The treasure buried in this philosophy isn’t a secret. It’s hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to shift our gaze from the prize to the process.

 

Happiness is a Verb:We chase happiness as if it were a destination. It is not. It is a byproduct of meaningful action. Stop seeking joy and start constructing it, brick by intentional brick.

 

The greatest antidote to fatigue, boredom, or despair is not rest, but a different kind of effort. The fatigue of consumption is draining; the vitality of creation is invigorating. A walk is better than watching a walkathon. Energy creates energy.

 

Never be so old, so senior, so important that you merely watch the games. The one who throws the ball, runs the lap, codes the line, or writes the first draft owns the experience. The spectator owns only a memory. As Durant warns, we should “never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Own your game.

 

So, today, let us replace a plea with a plan.

 

Instead of whispering, “Let me have,” let us declare, “Let me do.”

 

The invitation is simple but radical: stop only praying for a good life. Play one.

 

Stop only yearning for meaning. Make it.

 

Life’s true wealth is not in what we own but in what we’re alive enough to do.

 

And the gods, if they are listening, may just smile more on that than on any prayer.

 

Let us play.

 

This is not meant to sound like ‘ What they didn’t teach you at Harvard Business School “.  Though, worth understanding.

 

When Neil Armstrong planted that flag on the moon in 1969, the world saw one giant leap. What they didn’t see? The 382,000 people who had already failed on paper. NASA didn’t just plan the moon landing. They planned the planning. Then they planned what to plan before planning the planning.

 

Confused? Good. Let’s travel this journey together.

 

So, here’s the formula which is…not a formula. No seven steps to..no reframing..no pyramids..lets respect each others’ intelligence. Thats the least we can do.

 

Because the plan before the plan before the plan isn’t a system—it’s a shift in temporal architecture. It’s learning to see your current actions not as endpoints but as setup sequences. It’s understanding that what you’re doing today isn’t the plot—it’s setting up the character development for a scene that won’t happen until 2027.

 

Throwback time here:-

 

Starbucks’ real innovation wasn’t coffee. It was convincing landlords in the 1990s to give them corner locations with window space, even when they had no track record. The plan before the plan was real estate strategy disguised as a coffee business.

 

WhatsApp’s genius wasn’t the app. Before they wrote a single line of code, Jan Koum and Brian Acton spent years at Yahoo watching what NOT to do with messaging. Their plan before the plan was professional failure that became market intelligence.

 

Spotify didn’t plan to compete with iTunes. Their plan before the plan was securing music licensing deals nobody thought possible by framing themselves as piracy-killers to the music industry, not iTunes-killers. They changed the opponent before the game began.

 

The legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi once arrived at his most famous duel… without his sword.

 

His opponent, Sasaki Kojiro, was already there, blade gleaming, confidence radiating. Musashi showed up late. Casually whittled a wooden sword from an oar on the boat ride over. And won.

 

But here’s what the history books misses the wood for the trees(or oar?): Musashi’s plan wasn’t “fight with wooden sword.” His plan before the plan was “arrive late enough to agitate Kojiro.” The plan before THAT plan was choosing the island location where he’d have access to an oar. The plan before THAT was building a reputation unpredictable enough that showing up swordless would destabilize rather than disqualify him.

 

Most people prepare for battle. Legends prepare the battlefield.

 

In the Kerala backwaters, there’s a 73-year-old boatman named Krishnan who has never, not once in forty years, had an empty boat. Zero marketing. No website. Not even a painted sign.

 

His secret?

 

Twenty years ago, he started learning the names of children in tourist families. Not the parents—the children. He’d remember them year after year. “Is Sophia still playing violin?” “Did Rahul get into that engineering college?”

 

His plan before the plan before the plan wasn’t customer service. It was manufactured nostalgia. He was planting memory trees whose shade he’d enjoy decades later.

 

Now parents plan their Kerala trips around Krishnan’s availability because their kids—now adults—insist on it.

 

Most of us end up seeing the outcomes. That said, it is worth probing into the invisible architecture of everything.

 

You see a bakery. Fresh croissants. The aroma of butter and possibility. You think the plan was: make delicious bread, sell delicious bread.

 

Wrong.

 

The REAL plan—the one nobody sees—started three years earlier when the baker stood in a Paris alley at 4 AM, not learning to bake, but learning which flour supplier delivered before dawn. The plan before the plan before the plan was discovering that the city’s water pH affected yeast behavior. It was befriending the landlord’s mother so he’d hold the property for six extra weeks while permits came through.

 

This is what I call Pre-Strategic Positioning—the invisible scaffolding that makes “overnight success” possible after a decade of darkness.

 

Some people plan their work. Some work their plan. And then there are those who plan the plan before the plan before the plan — the rare breed who see the invisible scaffolding that holds strategy, serendipity, and soul together.

 

The first plan is what you scribble on a napkin. The second is what you polish for the PowerPoint. The third — the one before both — lives in your instinct, your madness, your hunger to make a dent before the world even knows a dent is needed.

 

Some food for torque here if you may:

 

When Steve Jobs was meditating in India, barefoot and unbothered, that was the plan before the plan before the plan. The ashram before the Apple Store. The real estate of the mind entrenched well before retail real estate.

 

Before the Wright brothers built their flying machine, they spent years watching birds over sand dunes. That was the pre-flight manual before the flight manual.

 

Closer home, before Ratan Tata dreamt of the Nano, there was a soaked-in-a-rainy-street moment — him watching a family of four balance precariously on a scooter. That was the human empathy before the corporate blueprint.

 

Your timeline is not your lifeline. If your plan begins in Excel, it’s probably already dead.

 

If it begins in emotion, curiosity, or chaos — you’re in business.

 

The Plan before the Plan before the Plan is the space between intent and invention. The boardroom that exists only in the mind. The audacity to say, “Let’s first feel before we figure.”

 

So before you do your next quarterly forecast, your next rebrand, your next pitch, ask yourself:

What are you not yet seeing that’s quietly forming? What’s the story before the story?

 

That’s your real starting line. Everything after that — the slides, the slogans, the success — is just the sequel.

 

The biggest myth in boardrooms and bedrooms alike? That success begins with the plan. Wrong. Success begins three floors below, in the subterranean basement of thought—the plan before the plan before the plan. That invisible architecture no one ever applauds but everyone benefits from. The scaffolding beneath the blueprint. The warm-up before the overture. The rehearsal before the rehearsal.

 

Da Vinci’s notebooks weren’t sketches for paintings alone. They were pre-sketches of sketches—miniature rehearsals of imagination. That’s why the Mona Lisa doesn’t just smile, she smirks—because behind her lies not a plan, but the plan before the plan before the plan.

 

Most strategy decks are choreographed to death. Logos, numbers, charts. But the companies that stand apart invest not in plans, but in the pre-plans. Apple’s “Think Different” wasn’t just advertising—it was pre-thinking. The ideation before innovation before execution.

 

Contrast that with Kodak. Their plan was solid: keep selling film. Their plan before that? Fuzzy. Their plan before that before that? Nonexistent. And so, they got trapped in their own Polaroid frame.

 

That Michelin star dish? The chef doesn’t begin at the stove. She begins at the market. Correction: she begins at the farm. That TED talk you admired? The rehearsals didn’t begin at the mirror. They began at the “What am I really trying to say?” question. That viral reel? It wasn’t about trending sounds. It was about micro-observations the creator made months earlier, parked quietly in their Notes app.

 

So what would the takeaways be here:-

 

Plans are public. Pre-plans are private. The unseen layers make the seen sparkle. Reverse engineer backwards. Don’t just ask “what’s the plan?” Ask, “what’s the plan before I even knew I needed a plan? Slow is strategic. Think of the un-hurried intention as the ultimate productivity hack. Greatness is fractal. Like Russian dolls, inside every plan lies a smaller one, quieter, truer.

 

The best strategies don’t begin with slides. They begin with silence. Execution is celebrated. Pre-execution is underrated. But that’s where the real game lives. So, forget Plan A, B, C. Ask instead: What was the prelude?

 

Because, clarity isn’t about being right. It’s about being understood.

 

Call it COK(Curse Of Knowledge). We forget what it’s like to not know. The more we know, the more disconnected we become from those who don’t. It’s not arrogance, it’s amnesia. We have all experienced it( as well have been on the giving end of it as well). Imagine the artist describing “negative space” while the buyer merely wonders why she painted only half the cat. Or the engineer explaining compression ratios to a customer who just wants his car not to sound like a pressure cooker. Or the startup founder who sprinkles “synergy, scalability, value proposition” into every sentence as if pitching to aliens fluent in PowerPoint.

 

We mistake articulation for understanding, and conviction for clarity. Clarity is not an IQ test—it’s empathy at work.

 

Here’s a story. In a small town near Coimbatore, a furniture merchant launched a collection called “Neo-Deco Timber Textures.” No one bought it—too fancy, too ambiguous. His competitor across the street just wrote on his hoarding: “Wood so good, your mother-in-law might compliment you.” Guess who sold out by Diwali?

 

Clarity lives where emotion meets simplicity. It doesn’t need perfect grammar or MBA vocabulary—it needs felt understanding.

 

The context in our heads often weighs more than the words on our slides. Maybe it’s time marketers, leaders, and communicators ask the golden question before hitting “send” or “publish”: “Can this be understood by my 10-year-old niece and my 70-year-old uncle—without a glossary?”

 

In workshops, we have seen brilliant strategists crafting pages of positioning statements colder than AI-processed legal contracts. But clarity doesn’t emerge from precision alone—it comes from perspective, context, and connection.

 

We assume others have access to the backstage of our thinking. They don’t.
We’re performing monologues and wondering why the audience won’t clap.

 

If they didn’t get it, you didn’t clarify—it’s still jargon in costume. Because, clarity is not conquest. It’s connection. Understanding is the new intelligence. So, don’t be right. Be read. Make sense. Not noise.

 

In the 1990s, a Stanford psychologist named Elizabeth Newton ran a brilliantly simple experiment. She divided people into “tappers” and “listeners.” Tappers were asked to tap out the rhythm of well-known songs like “Happy Birthday” on a table. Listeners had to guess the song.

 

Before starting, tappers predicted that listeners would guess correctly about 50% of the time.

 

The actual success rate? 2.5%.

 

Here’s why this is devastating: When you’re tapping, you hear the full song in your head—the melody, the harmony, the works. When you’re listening, you hear someone banging randomly on a table like a possessed woodpecker.

 

The tappers couldn’t un-hear the music in their heads. They couldn’t remember what it was like not to know.

 

This is the curse of knowledge (COK, and yes, the acronym is unfortunate). Once you know something, you can’t unknow it. You can’t remember what it felt like to be confused. You can’t access your own ignorance. And it’s killing your communication.

 

This is the curse that makes experts terrible teachers. The smarter you get, the worse you become at explaining things.

 

Why? Because you’ve automated so much knowledge that you’ve lost access to the steps.

 

Watch a master chef and they’ll say things like “cook until it looks right” or “add spices to taste.” Completely useless if you’re learning. They’ve internalized ten thousand micro-decisions that they no longer consciously make.

 

Or take our obsession with “common sense.” How many times have you heard “it’s just common sense” used to explain something?

 

Common sense is the most uncommon thing in the world. What’s “obvious” to you took years to become obvious. You just don’t remember the journey.

 

A Bangalore design studio I know has a brilliant rule: Every brief must be explainable to someone’s driver. Not because drivers aren’t smart—because they don’t share your context. If you can’t explain your strategy without using insider language, you don’t understand it well enough.

 

Strip away the COK, and what remains is truth.

 

This will sound hugely contradictory but the fact is that being right can make you wrong.

 

Here’s the tragic irony: You can be 100% correct and 100% ineffective at the same time.

 

An oncologist in Delhi sometime back talked about informing patients they have cancer. Early in his career, he’d dive straight into prognosis, treatment protocols, survival statistics. He was being completely accurate. Completely thorough.

 

Completely useless.

 

Because the patient heard “cancer” and their brain shut down. Everything after that was white noise.

 

Now? He starts differently. He sits. He makes eye contact. He says: “We found something. I’m going to explain what it is, what we’re going to do about it, and why I’m confident we can handle this together.”

 

Same information. Different sequence. Different framing. Infinitely different outcome.

 

Being right is easy. Being understood requires empathy. Clarity is meeting people where they are, not where you wish they were.

 

The most powerful communicators don’t tell you everything they know. They tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it.

 

Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon. Instead: six-page memos, written in complete sentences, read silently at the start of meetings. Why? Because bullet points hide fuzzy thinking. Sentences expose it. If you can’t write it clearly, you haven’t thought it clearly.

 

Clarity isn’t about information volume. It’s about information architecture. Less is more. And it is a radical act.

 

Though this is not a state kept secret, not very many tell you this; that clarity is not about them. It is about you. Every time you clarify your thinking for someone else, you clarify it for yourself. The act of explaining reveals the gaps in your own understanding. The questions you can’t answer simply are the questions you don’t actually understand.

 

So that startup founder in Boston? The one who took 40 minutes to say “Amazon for Latin speakers”?

 

The investors didn’t need the explanation. He did.

 

Clarity isn’t charity. It’s construction. You’re not dumbing down. You’re building up—their understanding and your own.

 

The curse of knowledge isn’t knowing too much. It’s forgetting what it’s like not to know. The cure isn’t knowing less. It’s remembering more—about the person in front of you, the context they’re missing, the movie you’re playing that only exists in your head.

 

Lead with the “Why,” Not the “What”: People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Start with the problem you’re solving for them, the itch you’re scratching. The features (the “what”) are just proof. Context first, content second.

 

Strip away the curse. What remains is connection. And connection? That’s the whole point.

 

The pursuit of being right is a lonely, exhausting game of intellectual one-upmanship. It’s you, shouting into a mirror.

The pursuit of being understood is a generous, impactful act of leadership. It’s you, holding out a hand.

So, the next time you have a brilliant idea, don’t ask, “Is this factually impeccable?” Ask the far more provocative, far more powerful question:

“Is this impossible to misunderstand?”

Drop the mic. Build the bridge. Because, your genius is useless if it’s locked in the vault of your own mind.

 

Steve Jobs once said, “Simple can be harder than complex.” Apple’s marketing isn’t about specs — it’s about the feeling. The story. The clarity of why. That’s why millions queue up for a rectangle with a bitten apple on it. Thats Apple’s genius.

 

A brand that sells furniture with no words in its manuals — yet everyone gets it. That’s the ultimate clarity: understanding beyond language. What can we learn from the IKEA Manuals? 

 

In leadership. In branding. In life. Being Understood Beats Being Right.

 

It’s not about proving you’re the smartest in the room — it’s about being the clearest.

 

The greatest communicators aren’t those who “win” arguments.
They’re the ones who help others see what they see.

 

Clarity is generosity — it’s the gift of making others feel smart.

 

That’s why great brands don’t lecture. They translate.

 

That’s why great leaders don’t declare. They connect.

 

Albert Einstein put it best: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

 

[Caveat Emptor: A long, long post(Pl feel free to say ‘ so long ‘ and move on). And, there is nothing officially or unofficially religious about this].

 

And this Emperor has no marketing budget, mind you.

 

It was when darkness met its match. In the sacred month of Karthik. When Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after fourteen years—not just as a prince, but as a promise kept—the people didn’t just light lamps. They lit hope itself.

 

Imagine: an entire kingdom holding its breath for 5,110 sunsets, and then finally…finally… exploding into light.

 

That’s what Diwali is. A collective exhale of joy so powerful, it’s been echoing for millennia.

 

But what really intrigues me – It wasn’t just about Rama’s homecoming. It was Sita’s resilience. Hanuman’s devotion. Lakshman’s loyalty. It was about ordinary citizens lighting diyas with trembling hands and extraordinary faith, creating a runway of light for their beloved king. A take off of optimism landing on the tarmac of faith.

 

They didn’t have much. But they had each other. And earthen lamps. And a belief that good must—must—come home.

 

Fast forward to today, and we’re still doing it. Still lighting those same clay lamps. Still believing in the same stubborn, irrational, beautiful idea that light will win.

 

Because let’s be honest—the last few years have tested us. The world’s been heavy. The news has been relentless. There have been days when hope felt like a luxury we couldn’t afford.

 

And yet.

 

And yet here we are, buying sweets we will regret eating, wearing clothes that’ll be too tight by dessert, hugging relatives we only see once a year, and lighting diyas that’ll blow out in the wind—only to light them again. And again.

 

That’s the real miracle of Diwali, isn’t it?

 

Not that darkness ends, but that we refuse to let it win. Not that life is perfect, but that we celebrate it anyway. Not that we’re always together, but that when we are—oh, when we are—it feels like the whole universe is conspiring to make us happy.

 

The curiosity that started this investigation. It’s October 2025. Every brand in India (and increasingly a lot of them around the world) is scrambling to create their “Diwali campaign.” Millions are being spent on celebrity endorsements, elaborate productions, emotional storytelling, and social media blitzes.

 

Meanwhile, Diwali itself—the actual festival—is doing what it’s done for 5,000+ years.

 

No CMO. No agency retainer. No quarterly brand health tracking.

 

Just… winning. Every. Single. Year.

 

Which begs the question I couldn’t ignore:

 

What does Diwali know about branding that the rest of us have forgotten?

 

First things first. What even is a Festival Brand? I am taking the liberty of defining it as something that operates at the intersection of Cultural mythology (the story we tell), Ritual behavior(the actions we repeat), Emotional payoff (the feelings we seek), Social currency (the belonging we crave), Economic activity (the commerce we enable).

 

By this definition, every festival is attempting to be a brand? Christmas. Eid. Holi. Thanksgiving. Passover. Baisakhi.

 

Here’s the question we want to put out there: Most festivals are regional champions. Is Diwali the global emperor?

 

Let me try to rationalise this line of thought( and pl feel free to disagree, debate, diverge):-

a)

-Let’s examine the competitive landscape :

 

Christmas dominates the West but struggles with religious exclusivity. Its origin story (the birth of Christ) is locked into Christian theology.

 

Eid is profound and beautiful but primarily celebrated within Islamic communities. Its brand equity is deep but narrow.

 

Chinese New Year travels well but remains ethnically anchored. You can celebrate it, but you’re always celebrating someone else’s new year.

 

Thanksgiving can’t escape being American (or Canadian). Try exporting that turkey dinner to Tanzania.

 

Now observe Diwali:

 

A Hindu festival, yes. But also a Sikh celebration (Bandi Chhor Divas). Also a Jain observance (Mahavira’s nirvana). Also a Buddhist recognition in some traditions. Also increasingly, a secular celebration of “good over evil” that resonates universally.

 

The enquiry deepens: How did one festival become the mother ship for multiple origin stories without losing coherence?

 

Answer: The brand idea is bigger than any single narrative.

 

Light over darkness. Knowledge over ignorance. Good over evil. Hope over despair.

 

These aren’t Hindu ideas. These aren’t Indian ideas. These are human ideas wrapped in an Indian aesthetic.

 

That’s not cultural appropriation. That’s cultural generosity. And it’s genius branding.

 

In summary, the Emperor just doesn’t cross borders, but erases them.

b)

Here’s something peculiar you would have noticed:

 

Diwali is simultaneously elite and accessible.

 

The Ambani family lights their skyscraper. The street vendor lights his cart. Both are “doing Diwali” correctly. Neither is more authentic than the other.

 

Compare this to most luxury brands (aspirational but exclusive) or mass brands (accessible but pedestrian). Diwali manages to be both aspirational AND inclusive.

 

How?

The core ritual is laughably simple: light a lamp. That’s it. A clay diya costs ₹5(or even lesser). Anyone can participate.

 

But the expression of that ritual? Infinitely scalable.

 

• Gold diyas on Italian marble
• Diamond-encrusted rangolis
• Designer ethnic wear
• Premium gift hampers
• Luxury travel for homecoming

 

The poor participate fully. The rich can elevate endlessly. Same brand, infinite price points.

 

Query: What other brand has achieved this democratic luxury at scale?

 

We’re still looking.

 

In summary, the Emperor mastered the art of democratic luxury.

c)

 

Here’s where it gets even more interesting.

 

Most festivals have fixed rituals. Christmas: tree, carols, Santa, gifts. Deviate, and it feels wrong.

 

Diwali? Diwali is a brand that says “yes, and…”

 

In Bengal: Yes, light the diyas, AND worship Kali. In Punjab: Yes, celebrate Rama’s return, AND honor Guru Hargobind’s release. In West| South India: Yes, Lakshmi Puja, AND also it’s the day Krishna defeated Narakasura. In Jainism: Yes, the lights, AND it’s Mahavira’s moksha. In modern secular India: Yes, the mythology, AND also it’s family time, shopping season, bonus season, new beginning season.

 

It’s not brand dilution. It’s brand expansion.

 

The question we’re sitting with: Is this what true brand strength looks like—not rigidity, but the confidence to let others add to your story?

 

In summary, the Emperor doesn’t compete, it absorbs.

d)

 

Watch a five-year-old light a diya. Now watch an eighty-year-old do the same.

 

Both feel the same wonder. Both are participating in the same ritual. Both believe they’re doing something important.

 

When was the last time you saw a brand that equally captivated a toddler and their great-grandmother?

 

Disney comes close. Apple tries. But they’re generationally segregated—kids get different products than adults.

 

Diwali gives everyone the same diya and says: “This is for you. Exactly as you are.”

 

The child thinks it’s magic. The teenager thinks it’s tradition. The adult thinks it’s nostalgia. The elder thinks it’s legacy.

 

Same product. Four different value propositions. Zero market segmentation.

 

Enquiry: What if the best branding isn’t about targeting demographics but about creating meaning flexible enough to meet people where they are?

 

In summary, the Emperor has cracked inter-generational marketing.

e)

Here’s the distribution strategy that should make every marketer weep with envy:

 

Diwali doesn’t distribute itself. We distribute it.

 

Every household becomes:

• A manufacturing unit (making sweets, snacks, rangoli)
• A retail store (gifting to others)
• A marketing channel (inviting people over)
• A brand ambassador (teaching children the rituals)
• A content creator (social media posts of celebrations)

 

The festival doesn’t push itself into our lives. We pull it in. We insist on it.

 

Imagine if Coca-Cola didn’t need factories because every family made Coke in their kitchen and gave it to neighbors. And felt proud doing it. And would be devastated if they couldn’t.

 

That’s not a supply chain. That’s a movement.

 

Question: At what point does a brand stop being consumed and start being embodied?

 

In summary, the Emperor’s Supply Chain Is Its Audience.

f)

5,000 years.

 

Five. Thousand. Years.

 

That’s roughly 50,000 Diwalis. 50,000 annual campaigns. Not one of them required a creative brief.

 

But here’s what you notice about longevity:

 

Diwali hasn’t survived by being rigid. It’s survived by having a fixed core with infinite flexibility.

 

The Core (Never Changes):

• Light over darkness
• Good over evil
• The act of lighting a lamp
• Coming together

 

The Flex (Always Changing):

• Clay diyas → electric lights → LED installations → eco-friendly options
• Physical gatherings → phone calls → video calls → WhatsApp forwards
• Handmade sweets → store-bought → gourmet → diet-conscious options
• Local celebrations → national → global diaspora events

 

The brand essence remains. The brand expression evolves.

 

Enquiry: What if brand consistency isn’t about doing the same thing forever, but about staying true to a core idea while allowing infinite interpretation?

 

In summary, the Emperor plays the long game( really long!).

g)

Notice what Diwali doesn’t do:

 

It doesn’t justify itself. It doesn’t explain why you should celebrate. It doesn’t have a mission statement or brand guidelines.

 

It just… invites.

 

“Light a lamp. Make some sweets. Invite people over. Be happy.”

 

There’s no hard sell. No FOMO marketing (though plenty of FOMO exists). No complicated value proposition.

 

The invitation is simple. The experience justifies the invitation.

 

Compare this to modern brands that spend millions explaining why you need them, convincing you of their purpose, proving their authenticity.

 

Diwali proves itself by being itself.

 

Question we’re wrestling with: What if the brands that explain the least are actually the most confident?

 

In summary, the Emperor doesn’t explain, it invites.

 

Now, how does the Emperor expand? Make geography, history!

India: Obviously. 1.4 billion subjects.

Nepal: Tihar festival, essentially Diwali across five days.

Sri Lanka: Deepavali, celebrated by Tamil communities.

Malaysia & Singapore: National holiday in some states. Major commercial event.

Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname: Wherever the Indian diaspora went, Diwali went. And flourished.

UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Netherlands,UAE, Mauritius : Now celebrated in major cities with public events, governmental recognition, even on the stock exchange (NYSE has observed Diwali, Burj Khalifa branding, Diwali in Dubai etc).

 

Notice the pattern: Diwali doesn’t conquer through force. It migrates through people. And then it converts others through experience.

 

You come to your Indian friend’s Diwali party. You light a diya. You taste some mithai. You feel the warmth.

 

Next year, you ask when Diwali is. Because you don’t want to miss it.

 

That’s not marketing. That’s magic. Brand advocacy hitherto never done or seen.

 

Observation: The best brand expansion doesn’t happen through advertising. It happens through advocates who say “come, experience this, you’ll understand.”

 

And, of course, the economics of it. Let’s be brutally commercial for a moment.

 

Diwali is potentially the world’s largest annual economic event tied to a single festival.

 

Consider:

• Retail: $30+ billion in India alone during the Diwali season
• Gold: 40% of annual gold sales happen around Diwali
• Real estate: Major buying season; developers launch specifically for Diwali
• Automobiles: Highest sales month
• Electronics: Rivals Black Friday
• Travel: Busiest travel period in India
• Hospitality: Hotels, restaurants, caterers fully booked
• Staffing: Bonus season, employment spike

 

And here’s the kicker: Diwali isn’t selling any of this. Diwali isn’t taking a cut. Diwali enables commerce without needing commerce to survive.

 

Query: What if the most powerful brand position is to be the occasion for other brands to matter, rather than competing with them?

 

You would have noticed something fascinating in action, in global pop culture:

 

Diwali is increasingly everywhere: Soft Power in action!

• Hollywood celebrities posting Diwali greetings
• Major TV shows (The Office, Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever) featuring Diwali episodes
• Global brands (Apple, Google, Facebook) creating Diwali campaigns
• Cities worldwide (NYC, London, Melbourne, Dubai) hosting Diwali festivals
• Politicians (UK Prime Ministers, US Presidents) issuing Diwali statements

 

This isn’t India pushing Diwali. This is global culture pulling it in.

 

Why? Because in a world that feels increasingly dark—politically, environmentally, socially—a festival that simply says “let’s light lamps and be together” feels less like a cultural export and more like a universal need.

 

Observation: The brands that win globally aren’t the ones that shout the loudest. They’re the ones that fill a void we didn’t know we had.

 

As we come close to this really loooong post, lets get to The Heart of the Enquiry: What Is Diwali Actually Selling?

 

Strip away the mythology, the rituals, the sweets, the fireworks, the gold jewelry, the new clothes, the family gatherings, the religious significance.

 

What’s left?

A promise. A very simple, very profound promise:

 

“Darkness is temporary. Light wins. You are not alone.”

 

That’s it. That’s the whole brand promise.

 

Everything else—every ritual, every tradition, every regional variation—is just a different way of keeping that promise.

 

And here’s why that makes Diwali potentially the emperor:

 

Because that promise never goes out of style. It never gets old. It never becomes irrelevant.

Economic recession? Light a diya; prosperity will come. Personal loss? Light a diya; hope remains. Global pandemic? Light a diya; we’re together in spirit. Climate anxiety? Light a diya; we’ll find solutions. Political division? Light a diya; humanity persists.

 

Observation: The brands that endure aren’t selling products or even experiences. They’re selling promises that resonate with permanent human needs.

Conclusion: What the Emperor Teaches Brand Builders

After this deep enquiry, here’s what we at State Of The Heart Branding(SOHB Story) believe Diwali demonstrates:

 

1. Start with Meaning, Not Marketing Diwali didn’t begin with a positioning statement. It began with a story so meaningful that marketing became unnecessary.

2. Make Your Brand Idea Bigger Than Your Brand Story Rama’s return is one story. Light over darkness is the idea. The idea can hold infinite stories.

3. Design for Participation, Not Consumption People don’t just celebrate Diwali. They make Diwali happen. That’s the difference between customers and co-creators.

4. Build Rituals, Not Just Touchpoints Touchpoints are moments. Rituals are commitments. One is transactional. The other is transformational.

5. Be Confidently Flexible Know your core so well that you can let everything else evolve. Rigidity kills brands. Flexibility sustains them.

6. Cross Boundaries, Don’t Protect Them The brands that hoard their identity eventually lose it. The brands that share it generously find it amplified.

7. Sell Hope, Not Products Products are what people buy. Hope is what they believe in. Sell belief, and product sales follow.

8. Play the Infinite Game Diwali isn’t trying to win this year. It’s trying to still matter in 5,000 more years. That changes everything.

The Final Question: Are We Asking Diwali to Teach Us, or Are We Afraid of What It Might Say?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth this enquiry revealed:

 

Diwali succeeds because it doesn’t think like a brand.

 

It doesn’t segment markets. It invites everyone. It doesn’t protect IP. It shares freely. It doesn’t maximize this quarter. It thinks in millennia. It doesn’t manufacture scarcity. It creates abundance. It doesn’t demand loyalty. It earns love.

 

And perhaps that’s the real lesson:

 

The moment we try to “brand” something the way Diwali is branded, we’ve already failed. Because Diwali isn’t branded. It’s believed.

 

Which leaves us with one final, humbling enquiry:

 

What if the emperor of festival brands is emperor precisely because it refuses to be a brand at all?

 

What if it’s something bigger? Something older? Something we’ve forgotten in our quarterly earnings calls and market share battles?

 

What if it’s just… true?

 

Studying Diwali has reminded us of something crucial:

The best brands don’t create meaning. They reveal it. They don’t manufacture feelings. They give voice to what we already feel. They don’t tell us what to want. They remind us what we’ve always wanted.

 

Light. Love. Home. Hope.

 

That’s the empire. That’s the emperor. That’s Diwali.

 

And maybe—just maybe—if we build brands with that kind of truth, that kind of heart, that kind of generosity…

 

Maybe we’ll create something that lasts.

Not 5,000 years. (Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

But longer than a campaign. Deeper than a tagline. More meaningful than a market share.

Maybe we’ll create something that matters.

Happy Diwali To One and All.