your DNA = the product’s components
there are thousands of ways to combine ink with plastic. and I’m sure you can find many of those in modern and contemporary-art museums around the world. but it has to be done is a pretty specific way for the ink to be contained within the pen, and for it to only come out when needed by the right extremity.

your human body = the product
once the right order has been found, you’ve got yourself a product. now every pen is not the next one. some pens can write in several colors. some use wood or metal as core materials. some are more ergonomic. some are small and some are big. and some cost a dollar to manufacture while some are made by hand in Switzerland by highly qualified artists and/or engineers. so one pen is not the other. and what brings them apart is the decisions taken in the product design process.

your personality = the brand
the way you talk, the words you use, the way you relate to people, your culture and values as a business, how you act and do things, what you stand for, etc. all those make you who you are as brand. not as a product. but as what your customers will relate to, identify with, and emotionally engage with. somehow, what makes you human as a product, as a company, as a brand. when
it comes to ball pens, they can either just be something to write with, or they can be a tool for self-expression, to build stories, or to fight illiteracy. something as small as a pen can have a higher purpose, a deeper meaning, a stronger story.

your recognizable traits = the branding
some parts of who you are can be very highly recognizable. it can be a color, a sound, a smell, a shape, a texture, a taste, or any combination of those. yellow can just look like a banana, but when it’s in the shape of two huge arches making the letter “M”, it means something different. a pen made out of plastic will feel different then a pen made out of metal or rose wood. it can scratch the paper, or roll over it as smoothly as your finger on your lover’s neck. it can have 250 pressure points impacting the thickness of the line – or just have an on and an off. and if some of those are unique and recognizable, they can be branding elements you use to tell the story of your product, as a brand.

your dress code = the marketing and communication executions
>if you try to sell your pen to a student for his/her studies, to a CEO for his/her meetings, to a hotel chain to place in all of their rooms, your story is going to be slightly different. but just like you would always be the same person in different clothes, your product and brand should always be at the center of your marketing – just dressed up slightly differently based on context and audience.
another way of looking at it is that if you are in a store that only sells pens, you don’t need to explain to customers that what you sell is a pen. the context takes care of it for you. the focus should be on why your pen versus the others. what yours does that others don’t. still the same product. still the same brand. but a different angle to your story which can translate into a different campaign or creative. always anchored into who you are.