What will they say when you’re gone?

Have you written your obituary? Me neither. I guess I’ll have to depend on my kids saying nice things about me. Even if you don’t write your own obituary, though, you can write your company’s. In fact, many many brand strategists use a “write your own obituary” exercise to create aspirational positioning and messaging. It’s a way to define yourself as a company and be deliberate about how you want others to see you, 

I love reading obituaries and learning what mattered to people and how they lived, in big and small ways*. Writing them for companies is interesting, too. I can imagine how we might eulogize some of today’s most impactful companies:

LinkedIn: Ended the paper resume, forever.

Zoom: Untethered knowledge workers from their offices.

VMWare: Allowed technologists to define everything in software

Pendo.io: Made software development a two-way street

Tesla: Made drunk driving and “fallings asleep at the wheel” history

You get the picture. We don’t talk about features or benefits. It’s about impact. When you take this approach to building your brand, you start with the goal in mind and work backwards. This is how you develop a brand that matters to people.  

*One of my favorites was the memorial that NPR’s Scott Simon wrote for Cokie Roberts, the NPR journalist who covered the US Congress for decades. It brought out a completely different side of Roberts;  I had only known Roberts as a professional, he memorialized her personal reputation:

“...in a profession that can consume people, Cokie Roberts stayed herself. She had a genius for friendship. She wrote notes and made calls. She brought food and books to friends when they were sick, or sad. She remembered birthdays and wrote job recommendations. She laughed — she cackled — at all kinds of jokes.”