Business by Nature: Help Your Brand Rediscover its Beach—Sea Turtle Style
Every summer, millions of sea turtles make their way home.
They travel thousands of miles through the depths, back to the same patch of sand where they hatched as many as 25 years before. And, in doing so, they reconnect with their origins—origins from which new life, new hope and new opportunities for their species begin.
And while we may never fully understand how these enigmatic reptiles navigate the vastness of the sea to find their home beaches, their epic journey is a testament to the value of rediscovering one’s past to ensure a better future. So, following in the footste—er, flipper splashes—of sea turtles, here are 5 ways you can help your brand reinvigorate its future, by reconnecting with its origins.
1. Trust Your Intuitions
Sea turtles have a mysterious sixth sense that relies on some kind of magnetic orientation capability to locate their home beaches. And while you might not have a literal magnetic receptor in your brain, as a marketer, you DO have a sense of what works—and what can work—based on the unique needs of your business. Trust this sense. Trust your intrinsic understanding of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Counterbalanced with a sound strategy, intuition can be a powerful tool for growth.
2. Remember Your Beach
Like sea turtles, every brand has a home—an ancestral “beach” from which everything about the business originated. For a brand leader, that’s your positioning: the underlying equities that make your brand what it is. And, as the tides of change ebb and flow, it can be extremely beneficial to revisit the foundational aspects of your brand: your message, your promise, your points of difference. Seeing where you came from often lends clarity to where you’re going.
3. Dig up Some Nostalgia
As female sea turtles climb back onto the beaches of their birth, they dig down into the sands of their past. In that, they find new hope for future generations… just as some of the world’s most iconic brands are today. Bringing back classic logos, product names and product lines can help your consumers reconnect to the core of your brand. This tactic is proving successful with millennials, who often gravitate to classic brand imagery they remember from their youth.
4. Build Your Own Nest
A sea turtle’s nest is critical for protecting hatchlings from predators and the elements. But your “nest”—as a business—is so much more than just an office or a physical locale. It’s the cultural underpinnings that lend a sense of familiarity, camaraderie and belonging to the people that ultimately perpetuate your brand’s legacy in the market. And having that “nest” of cultural norms and familiar traditions is just as important for your brand, as it is for sea turtles.
5. Sustain Yourself with Traditionally Successful Strategies
When sea turtles leave their home beaches and take to the sea, they stick to proven food sources and feeding grounds that have sustained their kind for ages. Green sea turtles instinctively frequent shallow lagoons and shoals where their staple foods—marine grass and algae—are plentiful. Meanwhile, loggerheads take to the open seas in search crabs, squid, jellyfish and other benthic invertebrates. The point is, sea turtles know what works for their unique needs and capabilities. They leverage proven strategies and established efficiencies to what they do best—just like any successful brand.
Do you need help reconnecting with your proverbial “beach” as a brand? At Seed Strategy, we can help you navigate the uncertain waters to find the true essence of your brand and your unique position in the market. Reach out to Becki Cedrone to learn more.
Interested in more insightful parallels about ecology and economy? Check out 5 Things Mockingbirds Can Teach Us About Branding, Why Cicadas Are Nature’s Most Industrious Innovators and Weathering Hard Times, Hog Style—and be sure to stay tuned for the next “eco collab” from Dr. Cindy Smith and Matt Donahue.
Dr. Cindy Smith, PhD, is an award-winning educator, environmental scientist, adventure wizard and corporate sustainability consultant. As an Environmental Science and Policy professor at George Mason University, Dr. Smith has dedicated her career to making knotty ecological problems easier to understand for the public and K12, while helping build strong partnerships between corporate interests and environmental groups. Follow her on Instagram at @cindywahoo and visit her website at drcindysmith.com.
Matt Donahue is a Creative Director at Seed Strategy with a passion—and a penchant—for product innovation, marketing theory, brand strategy, clutch alliteration and well-timed em-dashes. Not to mention the occasional fragment. Matt is a graduate of Seton Hill University’s “Writing Popular Fiction” master’s program and writes whenever he can.
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