Disruptive Brand?

In the wake of the Governor Christie/Washington Bridge debacle, one CNN interview leapt out at me: that of the Brand Consultant, Martha Pease. Pease announced that Governor Christie is a “disruptive brand.”

Whoa! What does that mean? When I was in school we got sent to the principal’s office for being disruptive. Disruptive means to “throw into disorder,” “to impede the process.” We got punished for that kind of behavior.

Please understand that I know nothing about brand-speak. The only brands I recognize are Kelloggs and Smuckers, stuff like that. My older grandsons—of which there are three—a few years back, took to calling me “G Ma.” “It’s your brand,” one of them said, smiling. I liked the name but had no idea what he meant.

Is Governor Christie really disruptive? I realize that ultimately he holds the reins in what is an appalling breach of almost everything you can think of. But still?  Christie is a “disruptive” brand? Is it that Christie’s quintessential nature creates disruption? Is that what we are talking about?

Apparently so. Pease went on to explain that Apple also is a disruptive brand and that people love them for it. In brand-speak, disruptive brand means that you are a person or a business committed to changing things, to shaking things up and doing the unexpected. That sounds promising; breaking up old forms to create new ones: the positive aspect of disruption.

Gov. Christie’s brand is now “sullied” and “tarnished,” according to Pease, and he will have to work to shine it up again. “It will be hard to rewrite the narrative,” Pease says, as Christie struggles for distance.

Yes. Let’s see. Rewrite it so that those inter-office emails were never meant to be anything but a private joke? Rewrite it so that actually the jam-up was a good thing because . . . I cannot think of a “because,” but then I’m not a spin-doctor.  

 No matter how apt “disruptive brand” is for Governor Christie, having owned responsibility for excessively throwing things into confusion and disorder, he might do well to become a fresh brand, something like Clear-Minded-Organized-In-Charge-Executive.

I wonder if there is one word for that?