Experiencing other cultures is one of the things I love most about travel. I like to try as many indigenous things as I can while in another country. My rule of thumb is to never eat at a restaurant where I hear more English being spoken than the language of origin. If locals aren't filling the place - experience tells me its not worth eating at.

Now many Americans would disagree – the sentiment being, "Give me what's familiar; I'm American, not European."

Just because I have afternoon tea in England, does that make me less American? I think not. The rules of being American are broad and complex and give me plenty of space to experience being a unique individual.

Back in Atlanta, I was driving through town last week and passed a MARTA bus with a Wells Fargo ad on the side. Walls Fargo just came to town and has been lighting up the city with their red and yellow. This particular bus was wrapped with a very simple graphic – just their logo and tagline.

The next day I passed another MARTA bus – this one with a SunTrust wrap. Their design approach? They created a design to promote the SunTrust brand, only theirs had obviously been designed in the context of being applied to a MARTA bus. The result was a bus wrap design with series of picture frames that surrounded each window on the bus. It was on-brand, and yet also unique, creative, and memorable.

What Wells Fargo seemingly failed to see that SunTrust picked up on was that context matters. A quality brand does require rules and structure to create a cohesive and consistent image across all platforms. But without any room to evolve and breathe – most of those brands become dull and lifeless over time.

Where Wells Fargo simply slapped their logo and tagline on the side of the bus, SunTrust considered the application itself and how their brand could interact with it. The SunTrust design was not revolutionary, but it was a smart application.

A fully developed and purposeful brand considers context, culture, and unimagined frontiers. It creates rules and structure and then leaves room to grow and develop. These are the brands that resonate deeply with their customers.

Dimensionality wins.

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