Do you have to polarize when it comes to branding?

What do Kanye West, Donald Trump, Basecamp, Nassim Taleb and the WWE have in common?

They all leverage the power of strikingly polarizing opinions and being loud about them to get attention, as well as to reach their core audience.

Each of those is a case study on its own, but to run through them quickly, each one has a narrative (or narratives) that they stand behind, repeating them loudly on multiple platforms and mediums.

Some are more consistent such as Basecamp’s stand on the negatives of the “Silicon Valley mindset”, or Nassim Taleb’s favorite group of “Intellectual Yet Idiots (IYI)”. Others, change depending on the situation that narrative can be used for benefit. For example, Donald Trump’s various labels throughout his presidential campaign — Crooked Hillary (Clinton), Lyin’ Ted (Cruz), Low Energy Jeb (Bush) etc.

The VC’s search for unicorns. (Image — Basecamp)

The WWE also knows how to use this tactic to create attention around a so-called “heel”, or a bad guy that is supposed to create the dynamic of shifting the audience to hate him and therefore root for the “baby face”, or good guy, that is getting the current “push” up the ranks of the superstar roster.

I experienced my own little micro version of this when I strongly stand behind the argument that more people should be starting their own thing, rather than complaining, or being unhappy about their current employment situation.

I am still figuring out how to phrase it on my company’s website, with the first iteration being “Life’s too short to be an employee”.

Note: I do realize that the phrasing of that needs to be improved as there is a low % of people that are indeed happy employees.

“Low %” being the key part of that sentence since I believe that the larger % of people out there are not positively emotionally invested at their current position.

What our messaging aims to become is to respect and congratulate the low % of folks that are happy employees, that might benefit from our products, but focus our communication and content around encouraging and enabling people that are not content with their current employment paradigm to do something about it.

This is also my truth, given that DULO is the project that will get me financially and more importantly time, location and decision independent.

Hopefully, by sharing our process we can build an authentic voice in this sphere and by being loud and consistent about it, reach our core group of people that we can provide the most value to.

When standing behind an opinion firmly, there is always a risk of offending someone, but as long as the intent is good I see it as an opportunity for an interesting conversation.

What’s a position/opinion you stand firmly behind?

Do you have to polarize when it comes to branding? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.