Catherine Stephens, a Disney executive, coined this phrase last week in casual conversation when she and I were discussing the studio’s new eco-brand, Disneynature.   I am captivated by the pairing of these words, because it describes perfectly the relationship between what a brand stands for, and what it has the potential to become.  This tension between fixity and fluidity, between discipline and disruption, between predictability and opportunity, is at the heart of entrepreneurship and branding.

‘Essence’ defines the core of a brand.  If brand is a tree, essence flows through its trunk.  Essence, especially at the beginning of a brand’s life, is often rooted to the sensibilities of one person or a small group.  For example, Steve Job’s appreciation of good design is at the heart of the Apple brand, Jimmy Buffet’s lifestyle is the essence of Margaritaville, and Tamara Mellon’s taste in shoes is the foundation for the Jimmy Choo brand.  Essence can also be an institutional philosophy like you’d find at a Japanese auto company, or a fast-paced technology brand like Cisco.  Either way, this is where a brand’s fire burns brightest, where vision is most needed, where a brand’s themes are distilled and defined.  It is where the secret formula for Coca Cola, Martha Stewart’s personal style, Oprah’s reading list, and the ‘Honest’ in Honest Tea reside.

‘Flexible’ is what the improvisational brand has to be at the edges of its network.  Continuing the tree analogy, flexibility is what you find in the tree’s outermost branches and leaves.  For a business operating in the Networked World, the edge is where the action is.  It is where creative disruption happens.  Where innovation is most likely to find its inspiration.  Most importantly, it is where a brand carries on conversations with its customers.  This is where you find skunk works, social networks, and tweets.  It is where buzz begins.

A brand needs both Essence and Flexibility to make a real impact in the marketplace, but it is interesting to note that a brand can be successful with a strong Essence and very little Flexibility, while the reverse is not true.  We have a word for brands with little or no Essence and a lot of Flexibility.  We call them doomed.   During the dotcom era, I once heard a pitch from a group of university scientists who’d lost their funding for a robotic crop picker and had somehow morphed their idea into a a proposal for a 3D web browser.  We in the audience failed to see the connection between the two ideas.  Those scientists never should have mentioned the robotic crop picker.  It may have demonstrated their Flexibility, but it revealed the absence of Essence.  They were showing us a pile of leaves and calling it a tree.

The priority is crystal clear.  Essence has to be the the first consideration.  If you got no Essence, you got nothing.