Visualise your brand landscape
On the southwest shore of Lake Atitlán, is the small Guatemalan town of San Pedro La Laguna. For hundreds of years, this charming town on an idyllic lake has been inhabited by the Tz'utujil Maya people.
Eventually the backpackers started coming, and San Pedro turned into an off-piste destination for the intrepid traveller. About 10 years ago, my friend Matt became one these adventurers. And he never left.
Fast forward to 2020, he’s purchased some land on the steep hills that rise up to one of three volcanos that surround the lake.
In 2021, he plans to build his own house.
Last weekend over Zoom he was telling me how it was going.
“The problem is that the land is pretty uneven, and it drops quite drastically from the top section down to the bottom. Building a house on a slope isn’t ideal.”
That did sound like a problem.
“Also, it undulates all over the place.”
That also sounded like a problem.
So what was Matt’s approach? He needed to figure out a way to visualise the height differential across his plot of land.
Using a garden hose and two metal pipes, he made a very large spirit level. He filled the hose with water, and ran one end of the hose up Pipe A, and the other end up Pipe B.
This meant that he could stick Pipe A in the ground, and observe the change in the height of water in the hose as he moved Pipe B around the land.
Pretty resourceful, but pretty analog and time-consuming.
He took measurements in two metre sections, and scribbled all the numbers down on a notepad.
“You see all these numbers? Well I’m going to input them all into a Digital Elevation Model.”
A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a 3D computer graphics representation of elevation data. It will allow Matt to see the profile of his plot of land in three-dimensions, so he can figure out the best place to build his house.
A lot of manual labour and a very rudimentary method of calculating height had given Matt the data he needed to be able to visualise his land in x, y, and z. He’ll be able to run models, figure out water flow, potential flooding issues and find the sweet spot to build his dream house. The DEM was worth every second of his data-collection.
I was impressed. So I thought I’d dig a little deeper into the next phase of his plan, it was all pretty sophisticated so far. It only stood to reason that he’d have an equally ingenious approach going forward.
“So what’s next? Once you have this DEM, and find the perfect spot, how are you going to flatten it?”, I asked.
Matt stood up, and walked out of shot. After a few seconds of rustling off camera, he returned. He was holding a pick-axe and a hoe.
That was his plan.
Matt takes his time. He never does anything by halves. He researches and plans out every move, considering every possible outcome. Playing Monopoly against Matt is a nightmare.
But the DEM affords him enormous possibility.
He doesn’t have to guess. He doesn’t have to go down the route of trial and error. He can experiment with multiple scenarios and pinpoint the areas that will need most of his focus, and the areas that would otherwise have been a waste of his time and efforts.
He took his time to understand the problem, and recognised the huge value in having the Digital Elevation Model.
Building a brand follows the same principles.
Your brand is probably uneven. It might be vulnerable to flooding on one side but hugely fertile with a crop of bountiful coffee plants on the other.
It can be tempting to jump the gun and hire a mini digger and an earth flattener. There are endless resources available for brand building too.
But before making any plans for the brand you’d like to build, you’d be wise to take the time to collect some data and visualise the landscape.