Here’s a branding case study from Advertising Age that bears reading no matter what business you’re in. The piece focuses on Pabst Blue Ribbon, the blue-collar beer that saw a 25 percent sales spike in 2009.

But the way we read it (and the way you should read it, too), the story isn’t about PBR; it’s about succeeding in business by embracing what you are instead of chasing what you want to be.

Look, there are times when you get to tell the world what you are. And times when you can get people to believe you. But there are also times – more and more of them (we’ll get to that in a minute) – when the relationship works the other way: When the world (or, in this case, the consumer has the power, when they tell you what you are. The trick is to know when you’re in that situation, because if you recognize it, as Pabst Brewing has, you can make it work to your advantage.

Pabst, as Ad Age points out, took an image that a lot of companies would bristle at and wore it like a badge. And by embracing what their product was, the positioned themselves to capture a major segment of the market, and one that’s growing like crazy at the moment.

Over the years, we’ve run into more than our fair share of prospects and clients who couldn’t let go of the idea that they were going to define their product or service – even in the face of evidence that their prospects had different ideas about who they were and what they were selling. In virtually every case, they would have been better off going the PBR route. And, hey, we get it. You’ve worked hard to build a business or create a product; it’s your baby; you don’t need someone else to tell you what it is. Thing is, sometimes it’s going to happen that way whether you like it or not.

That’s more true today than it’s ever been before. It’s going to continue to get truer, too, because it’s the way of the on-line culture, and that’s where the broader culture, and the broader economy, is taking its cues these days. There’s nothing to social media other than what users make of it. End users increasingly define gaming, entertainment, even their own consumer experiences, on the internet. That trend isn’t going to turn around. And as it becomes more and more common on line, it’s only going to increase the power of the prospect to decide what a business or a product means to them.

Pabst Blue Ribbon stories are the stuff of the future. It’s up to you to decide whether that’s a future you and your business want to be part of.