BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Through pro­found ex­pe­ri­ences, both per­son­al and ex­ter­nal, the hu­man-cen­tred, ex­pe­ri­en­tial brand ‘Re­Think’ was born. With the tagline Trans­form­ing Minds, Chang­ing Lives, its founder Ernie Ross of Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing ex­plained that Re­Think’s con­cept was sim­ply but ef­fec­tive­ly about shift­ing per­spec­tives—look­ing at the world the way it is not the way we are.

To en­cap­su­late his the­o­ry, it’s about those mo­ments in life that force one to re­think and breathe the start of es­tab­lish­ing true iden­ti­ty, dis­cov­er­ing pur­pose and cre­at­ing a lega­cy of in­tan­gi­ble val­ue.

On these fun­da­men­tals, added now to the al­ready ex­ist­ing res­onat­ing body of work done by Re­Think, was the in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess of its ini­tia­tive “In­tang­ien­ce,” a method­ol­o­gy re­cent­ly cer­ti­fied by the Unit­ed Na­tions Uni­ver­si­ty for Peace and in­cor­po­rat­ed as bona fide cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme.

Over the eight years of its ex­is­tence, Re­Think con­cep­tu­alised ini­tia­tives all based on hu­man con­nec­tion, like its hap­pi­ness work­shops and kind­ness cards, and its T&T per­spec­tive on the UN ob­ser­vances—World Kind­ness Day and In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Hap­pi­ness—in which tai­lored ac­tiv­i­ties were de­vel­oped to im­part not just a mo­ment of kind­ness, but the trans­for­ma­tion of a mind­set that can be passed on.

It in­cludes ini­tia­tives like The Gift, a ran­dom bless­ing of gifts to peo­ple, but not with­out en­sur­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal food for that much-need­ed shift in per­spec­tive. In­side those gifts, three ques­tions are al­ways posed to in­duce in­tro­spec­tion:

1. Who am I?

2. What is my pur­pose?

3. How will I be re­mem­bered?

Of this mile­stone achieve­ment, Ross told the sto­ry of how the “in­tang­ien­ce” phi­los­o­phy came to be, in­spired by the words of a dy­ing man, and what it is poised to ac­com­plish.

He said his late broth­er-in-law Bri­an was a man who em­bod­ied and lived out the true mean­ing of hap­pi­ness. It was from Bri­an’s hos­pi­tal bed these words were spo­ken: “He said to me, ‘Ernie, you know what you’re do­ing is in­tan­gi­ble right. There is a world of brand­ing but then there is a brand­ing of in­tan­gi­ble val­ue’.”

The night be­fore Bri­an died he re­searched ma­te­r­i­al and sent it to Ross to show him he was al­ready do­ing in­tan­gi­ble brand­ing but was not aware.

It forced Ross to re­think: “I looked at what I was do­ing and I re­alised the very same three ques­tions, I had put in­to the gift is what I was do­ing in my work.

De­pict­ing the “in­tang­ien­ce” phi­los­o­phy as a sci­ence—the mak­ing of cre­ative de­vices linked to hu­man con­nec­tion—Ross said over the years it was in­tan­gi­ble brand­ing that gave gi­ant brands like Co­ca-Co­la, Nike and Star Bucks, their bil­lions.

He said more than a so­da, cof­fee or ath­let­ic footwear, they all fig­ured out how to sat­is­fy the crav­ing of hu­man con­nec­tion which man­i­fest­ed in their slo­gans, cam­paigns, pro­mo­tions etc. He said it the key was per­son­al­is­ing the brand and mak­ing it re­lat­able to its au­di­ence.

But for in­tang­ien­ce or in­tan­gi­ble brand­ing to suc­ceed, Ross said there must be the cur­ren­cy of con­ver­sa­tion—rel­e­vance, re­gard and res­o­nance.

It was while in Cos­ta Ri­ca, that Ross’s in­tang­ien­ce phi­los­o­phy be­came known to the Unit­ed Na­tions Uni­ver­si­ty for Peace af­ter it was pre­sent­ed at the Glob­al Hap­pi­ness Sum­mit.

Fol­low­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, a friend sug­gest­ed he have the method­ol­o­gy val­i­dat­ed. Ross reached out to the uni­ver­si­ty to take a deep­er look at the pro­gramme.

It was sub­se­quent­ly re­viewed and with the guid­ance of the co-founder of the uni­ver­si­ty, Ross learned how to de­vel­op his phi­los­o­phy in­to a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme which was lat­er val­i­dat­ed, cer­ti­fied and brand­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty. It is cur­rent­ly been taught to the uni­ver­si­ty’s stu­dents and busi­ness­es glob­al­ly. The uni­ver­si­ty is al­so us­ing it as a mod­el to de­vel­op its in­tan­gi­ble brand­ing.

The In­tang­ien­ce Cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme can be ac­cessed on­line through the uni­ver­si­ty. How­ev­er, Ross said through Re­Think he will al­so be of­fer­ing the course free of charge to any emerg­ing busi­ness.

“If you can es­tab­lish proof to us that you are an emerg­ing brand, some­one who lost a job, some­one look­ing to set up a new busi­ness but you don’t have the back­ing and sup­port, we will pro­vide that to you free of charge,” he said.

Among sev­er­al stages Ross is ex­pect­ed to present on, he is sched­uled to speak at the Glob­al Hap­pi­ness Sum­mit in March 2021.