First star on the right, and straight on till morning;

My favourite app at the moment is called SkyGuide.

It’s a beautiful thing. You open it up in the garden at night – maybe with a glass of wine – and hold it up against the sky, and it maps all the constellations and planets for you, with names, and drawings showing you what’s what and who’s who.

At the beginning, I started just spinning around endlessly, phone held up to the sky, finding zodiac constellations, saucepans,  and the hunter, Ryan, and his famous belt…

And then I started to get a little more focussed.

Now, I’ve been able to find the North Star for years.

It seemed like an important thing to know, and in a clear sky it is relatively easy to find. (If you follow up the right-hand edge of the Great Bear – also colloquially known as the saucepan – then the first star that you hit in the sky is the North Star. You can do a similar thing on the other side of the planet using the Southern Cross, though I’ve never needed to yet.)

What this little app enables you to do is to actually use the North Star. To really get it; to deeply understand how it sets the scene for everything else once you’ve found it.

For thousands of years the North Star has served as a point of direction for people moving around the Earth. Whether exploring across continents by land, or seas by boat, the North Star enabled people to know where they were at any given point in time and to understand the direction they needed to go.

It never moves. It stays as a fixed point in the sky and everything else rotates around it, and even when the sun is shining and you can’t see it, it is still there.

The North Star is the ultimate navigation tool.

How all the constellations move around the North Star.

How the things that move differently each night – the anomalies – are the planets.

How once you know where that one star sits, everything else falls into place.

What has this got to do with brands?

Everything.

You see, brands, and brand leaders are the ultimate navigation tools for businesses.

Because they stand in the external world, brands are the connection between a businesses commercial ambition and its customers. Brands face customers, sit in categories, and need to adapt to the context that sits between the two.

In the same way that a ship’s navigator would stand on the bridge and determine which direction to go, it is the job of brand leaders to look out into the external world and use what they see to guide their businesses.

Where others see darkness and endless galaxies, brand leaders find the North Star and use it to guide the ship.

Call it a vision, a purpose, a belief – or any other definition, and there are many – it’s the brand leader’s job to find it, and to use it to make the changes that make a difference.

It is important that brand leaders find the North Star for three reasons.

Firstly; because the North Star sets the context for everything else.

The important thing about finding the North Star is actually more than just knowing where North is; it’s what you can do once you know that.

Once you know the North Star, you can find out exactly where you are on earth, and travel in any direction. You can start to move.

Once a brand has a clear direction, making choices about everything else becomes much easier.

It becomes obvious which steps are going to lead you where you want to go, and which ones aren’t. You can spot the projects that ‘point North’ and the ones which lead in the wrong direction.

Secondly, because the North Star helps you spot anomalies.

Once you can find the North Star, and start mapping the sky above you, you start to understand how everything moves around it in regular movements.

That’s interesting enough, but what’s really useful is that when you know how things move ‘normally’ it starts to become really obvious when things aren’t normal.

Amongst the expected patterns you can spot the fast moving dots that are satellites, and the bright lights that are in one place today, but in a different place tomorrow, which are the planets.

The same thing happens with brands. Once you know the North Star, and what “on brand” looks like, you can start to spot the things that are “off brand” and adapt.

In that sense, the North Star is a brilliant waste removal system; highlighting what is out of place so that you can either make it work more efficiently or remove it altogether.

Thirdly; because if you don’t do this as a brand leader, nobody else is going to do it for you

It’s the job of a marketer to stand in the customer’s shoes, to understand the context of their world, and the category that the business operates in, and to use that information to inform business direction.

Nobody else in a business has that responsibility, but everybody else can benefit from it.

Other teams benefit from the context being set, from the anomalies being spotted, for the direction being clear.

The guiding star helps us to align our internal resources so we can better address the reality of the external world.

Star gazing isn’t a waste of time – it’s a gift!

Is there an easy “Stargazing” app for Brands?

Sadly, like most things in Marketing, it’s more complicated than that, and there isn’t a simple app which you can point at your business which will tell you the answer.

But there is a pretty good process, which has been tried and tested on many brands over the years.

It starts with an understanding of your customers, your category and your unique commercial reality; 3 sets of vital information

about the external world which together make up your own ‘night sky.’

It involves analysing that information using the world’s oldest and most evolved supercomputer, the human brain, deep in thought-

provocation, conversation and evaluation.

It finishes with crafting an articulation of the output into a single-minded and distinctive “North Star” which is clear enough to shine in the night sky and bright enough guide a total business.

It takes time, and energy, and expertise to get right, but once you know where your North Star is, everything else falls into place.

The world is a confusing place and finding direction is more important than ever – so it’s worth spending a moment doing what all good navigators do.

Step out on the bridge of your ship, and stare at the stars.

Find the bright light that tells you where you are, and where you need to go.

And use that information to guide your business onwards, and upwards.

First star on the right, and straight on till morning.