In a hipster cafe in Warsaw, I found this collection of erotic teas. One of them is a Jasmin tea called: "In the Mood for Love". The other one is called "Love on Fire". Apparently, it's a "Blend of superherbs and adaptogens".

Mind you, I don't really know what an adaptogen is, but if it's gonna set my lovin' ablaze, then you better believe I’m all in. “Sign me up!” I said. 

The waitress (she was kinda cute) scanned it in and couldn't hold back a smile. I panicked. I told her they were purely for research purposes. I don't know what she said because it was in Polish. But we understood each other very well.

Thankfully, this is not a story about the erotic qualities of overpriced specialty teas. What I wanted to share instead is a profound lesson in branding through the work of this obscure company from east of the Iron Curtain.

These people understand what branding means. They know that a brand's essence is its ability to communicate something. I go home, and I find that misses Ayadi brewed me a cup of tea that tastes suspiciously like my cheeky Warsaw tea. That’s a good night right there. No words were said but communication happened.

Your friendly neighborhood moron in the Supreme shirt is also communicating at the highest level. He's not telling us that he's "in the mood for some love". That's not the Supreme brand. He's saying: " I'm a mindless cog in the consumption machine. If you are one of us, show me your Supreme. Let's connect". That's indeed what happens. That's why they keep buying Supreme. It helps these brainiacs find each other and communicate. Each one reassures the other that he's not the only moron in town.

Brands connect people in very many ways.

If misses Ayadi were to share her feelings on the fridge with a Sharpie, then I might still be very enthused. But for me, it might take away some of the experience. Perhaps it could make the experience nicer for you. To each their own. That's the second lesson about brands: they select. They filter. They send scrambled messages in busy channels. Those messages get picked up only by the people who pick them up: the others.

I have another tea that is not as well branded. But I branded it myself. It's Ayadi’s Relaxatron. There's nothing relaxing about it. Probably has a lethal dose of caffeine and not a single adaptogen. But I branded it as a relaxation tea nonetheless and it doesn't fail to put me at ease. It winds me down because the brand said so. Couldn't I just relax without it? Certainly. But a proxy helps. It adds texture to the experience. Makes it grip easier, it outsources the effort. That's the third thing to understand about brands. Brands are proxies.

Peeling an orange is part of eating an orange. Packaging. Layering. Setup. Process... You add these layers because when you say the thing directly, it transforms it into a different thing. Brand is how you say something without saying it. It’s not the logo. It’s what the logo means. How do we pack a logo with a bunch of meaning? That’s the mission. That’s why brands cost.

A brand is a signaling machine, like a lighthouse, a flag, or a telephone pole. Delightful, dumb, or delinquent the signal may be. The effectiveness of the brand is in how much of the message can it carry, and how well it can target it. It achieves that by building a proxy, one that only the right people receive and appreciate, one that sails further in a given channel.