What Brand Am I?

Simple. I am Planet Express. You know, from Futurama.


Let me explain why Planet Express is the perfect brand/corporation for me.

They continue to do business, but struggle making all the ends meet.
During the show, the employees are constantly fighting off perilous danger only for meager salaries and weak benefits. The management is senile. The physician knows nothing about human anatomy and the accountant is a cold hearted Jamaican.

Things constantly break, and everything goes wrong all the time. Planet Express constantly fights off larger corporations (Mom Corp.) They battle political and legal discrepancies that are prevalent now and in the future (. Environmentalists, aliens, robots, robosexuals, the Democratic Order of Planets (DOOP), and past and future beings constantly interfere with Planet Express's ability to do business.

The company has been through a stock market boom and subsequent crash, been taken over and resold, has changed ownership, and has somehow managed to persevere and survive in the hostile environment of the year 3000.

Granted this is not a real company, and Futurama is not a reality. But that doesn't make it any less a company or brand that I identify with and would label as my own.

Let me explain.

I am an entrepreneur. I have owned three of my own businesses. These include a Custom Tshirt Printing, Landscaping/Handyman work, and small scale furniture making. These are manual, hands-on businesses that take planning and logistics to succeed and be functional. Not like other businesses are not this way, but I feel like the scale of businesses I have made is similar to that of Planet Express - a small fish in a big pond just trying to make ends meet while doing something I thoroughly enjoy.

I have hired and fired my friends before. At Planet Express, it happens often where friends are hired, shenanigans happen, and then they are promptly fired. Though most of the employees are friends, they didn't start that way. And only the closest friends of the owner are allowed to work at his company. Having started all my companies from scratch, and dealing with micro operations, I have had my fair share of employing my friends and family part or full time. And also like at Planet Express, I have had to let people go for their inability to meet my requirements as a business. All too often, the people I hire have a relaxed sense of responsibility because their buddy hired them. It is a rude awakening when they don't step up and I have to kick them out.

Planet Express has some very quirky characters working there as well as some incredibly hilarious and absurd stories. Again, it is a company based in the year 3000 AD where space travel is common and aliens/robots abound, but even on a basic level, interactions with employees and management, other businesses, and government are all reasonable if not over the top. This, I feel paints a reasonable image of some of the trends that occur in businesses across the world today. It is all relationships and brand image - these are things that Planet Express struggles with, but has to deal with all the time. Likewise, I have the same struggle. I am a brand in myself - not my companies. Back home, people have already asked if I can come back and work for them because they know my ethic and what I am capable of. They didn't ask my counterparts, just me. This parallels Planet Express because like them, I constantly shift my focus and want to try new ventures. I cannot keep myself in one domain of the market when there are so many opportunities. Not like Planet Express is trying to move out of the package delivery business, but they lose their focus often.

All of the employees of Planet Express are unique. One is from Mars, the other is a 160 year old man, another is the 24 year old uncle of the elder, there is a cyclops, a lobster, a robot, and a Jamaican. These are extreme differences between people, but it adds a dynamic diversity that allows them to see through an unending number of difficulties. All businesses face their own hurdles to jump, but I like the uniqueness of those seen at Planet Express. Likewise, because I try and do so much with my time, managing a couple different businesses, and therefore different people, I feel like I too am unique in my challenges and hurdles with the work I do.

The main character of the show, Fry, though not the owner, is who Futurama revolves around. He was was cryogenically frozen and was awoken in the future. Everything is amazing to him as he learns to adapt with this newly revolutionized Earth, but he is able to take trends and experiences from the 1990's to make positive changes for Planet Express. He constantly needs guidance from his co-workers too keep him on track, but he holds his own and does things his own way. I would consider myself to be the owner, but still a lot like Fry for a number of reasons. Oftentimes, I feel like I to do not fit in with the things I am trying to accomplish. I need advice and people to bounce ideas off of all the time. I need someone to listen to my stupid comments and tell me they are stupid so I do not go off chasing them. I need some amount of grounding while still exploring my potential. Fry and I are a lot of the same - save he is Irish.

It is not the best example, but Planet Express is the strongest thing to brand identity that I could equate myself with. There are brands that I am loyal too - Old Spice, Gillette, Adiddas, Puma, Select, Clausen Pickles, or Peter Pan Peanut Butter. But none of them are enough of what I like. They are fractions of the whole. I think that the reason why I couldn't come up with a brand identity that exists in modern day is because I haven't created it yet.