“Your Own Line”
The word strategy comes from the Greek strategos, derived from stratos (“army”) and agein (“to lead”). No strategist would publish their plans if the goal had not already been achieved. The ideal situation is when your strategy emerges along the way, through real-world testing and friction with reality—not as a method someone handed to you as a ready-made manual. Those who rely on prefabricated templates will remain among the 98% who are eventually stopped by the crowd. They become the ground on which those who follow their own line move forward.
“Transference”: from Psychoanalysis to Marketing
One of the most powerful dynamics in marketing is the creation of positive transference. This happens when a person begins to see in you—or in your product or service—something they deeply long for in life. Something they feel they cannot live without. A missing piece. A lost paradise.
In that moment, they unconsciously turn you into a patch for a hole in their life.
By becoming part of that story, you may become the “love of their life” as a brand—while at the same time delaying their psychological maturation. Instead of confronting loss and integrating it, they continue chasing the illusion of fulfillment. The pursuit of that “flight” becomes endless.
With your help, the client may keep replaying their personal script—regardless of what else you offer: new services, new products, new promises. Unconsciously, they will keep using you—or another brand—to fill what you remind them of.
In a healthier reaction, a person might say: “Seriously? This again? Another version of the same story we’ve seen a hundred times.” Like those old detergent ads teaching us not to boil laundry with Tide.
Of course, it is beneficial if you understand and manage transference. Otherwise, your brand may become the container for negative transference—suddenly you are perceived as the unloved brother, the closed door blocking access to pleasure.
So the real question for a brand strategist is simple:
What do you replace in the psyche of your audience?
The “Broken Libido” of the Audience
Every brand works with the unfulfilled libido of its audience.
Some convert it into obsession with a specific brand stimulus—a pattern, a logo, a visual code. Others redirect it into compulsive shopping itself. The act becomes the release; the meaning is automatically projected onto it.
Marketing always deals with externalized objects of the unconscious.
At times it resembles the ocean pulling back at low tide—suddenly revealing millions of repetitive behaviors. Acts that seem irrational but are attempts to escape certain feelings while still needing engagement with the world.
And suddenly—you find yourself chasing new products. Or becoming intensely interested in services you never needed before. For a moment it feels like relief, a way to express something that both repels and attracts you unconsciously.
Then the realization returns: “I spent all my money again on something marketing promised would release my emotions.”
But the release isn’t there.
No brand and no marketer can truly close that inner gap—that small, restless leak of hysteria. That is precisely why the industry will exist forever.
If a strategist understands how to work with this permanent human condition, the brand can thrive through a deep psychological resonance—almost a fusion—between the brand and its audience.
