What’s happening today in the world of consumers and brands is pretty simple, really. Especially if you step away from the business of branding for awhile and just pay attention to people and the world.
We are catching up with our consciences.
Not some simplistic naughty or nice superego Jiminy Cricket conscience, but a more sophisticated conscience (or consciousness) regarding our actions and their repercussions.
Meaning we’re actually regarding our actions. You could say that the post-modern post-industrial first world is finally waking up from its self-serving ways (colonialism only ended with World War II, remember), and is looking at some of the undesirable reverberations such self-ish actions have left in our wake.
This is why people are buying Toyota’s Prius, for instance. We are now aware that our actions have created global warming, and we’re finally prepared to do something about it. ($3 a gallon gasoline didn’t hurt, either.)
Everywhere you look there is a new mindfulness about the consequences of what we do in
this world, as if we’ve discovered both Newton’s Third Law and the concept of karma at the same time. The first says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The second says, essentially, that your actions create an infinite set of ripples throughout the universe that come back to affect you.
People are developing a metaphysical concept around the physical act of consumption. This is evident in many current trends, from the sustainability movement to bloodless diamonds to fair-trade coffee. People are now concerned about not just the things they see but the things they don’t see. And you could really boil this new perspective down to one simple question which consumers seem to be asking themselves as they make their purchases.
What am I feeding?
Am I feeding a real need or a perceived need? Am I feeding myself with good food or bad food? Am I feeding the farmer or the exploitation of the farmer? Am I feeding peace or am I feeding warlords? Am I feeding the enrichment of my life or the enlargement of the landfill?
At the most simplistic level, an economy is pretty much a co-feeding agreement. In the hunting and gathering economy, the pact is that if you hunt, I’ll gather. In a consumption-based economy, it’s more like if you’ll work and earn money, I’ll manufacture sofas and sell them to you.
But we live in a consumption-based economy run by stockholders who demand that companies grow, and therefore that consumption grow. Consumers have pretty much gone along with this because they get cool things like year-around fresh vegetables, Italian shoes, video games, and the The Flip. But they’re starting to see the consequences of growth in consumption, and they’re starting to measure the request to consume against their deepest values in life. And they’re beginning to change their pattern of actions.
Toyota gets this. In an interview with the Harvard Business Journal, Toyota
president Katsuaki Watanabe talks about wanting to eventually develop a car that does no harm. At the same time, Toyota has also been selling the hybrid Prius for ten years. Toyota is mirroring the conscience (and consciousness) of the consumer, who also totally wants a car that does no harm. (Who in their right mind wouldn’t?)
On the other hand, there’s Detroit. Enough said.
Now don’t get all smug, you other brands out there, because Chrysler, Ford, and
GM are only the current posterkids of wretched failure. If you don’t pay attention to the metaphysical as well as the physical needs of your customers, you, too, will be crawling to the Capitol with a begger’s cup – if you’re lucky and big enough to get an audience.
The key to everything is meaning. Because humans are meaning-driven creatures. That’s why the cave paintings at Lascaux are not advertisements for mastodon burgers, they are visual,
symbolic engagements linking the physical with the metaphysical world. As humans, we crave an integration of the here and now, like our need for food, with the larger world of ethics and values and – dare I say it – spirituality.
Our theory of Brand Culture takes this into account as it proposes a new model for building brands based on a new understanding of what people want and need from brands. The good news is, it helps corporations and organizations build a much more sustainable, long-term brand that doesn’t have to constantly be throwing something new against the wall to see if it sticks.
It also gives consumers (or, if you will, people) a chance to question their own values from within their relationship with a brand, rather than from outside it. It gives people a chance to match their values and beliefs to the values and beliefs of brands, enter a conversation with the brand, and reconcile their consumption with their values. And, ultimately, it just might help to grow a brand that does no harm.
When you build a brand culture, you loudly and clearly answer your customer’s question, What am I feeding? Believe me, they’re asking that question. Have you got a reply?
– Doug
[…] could be poised to actually build a brand around a set of real honest to goodness values, which will definitely set them apart from the local competition, who are going to have a hard time […]
[…] and until audiences are essentially being invited to join a brand’s culture based on shared values, many of the brand experiences we create will be seen as exactly that – manipulation and […]
buddha is not a statue or a painting but our eyes caches some thing from any seen if our eyes takes action behind the seen we can expect next action if we know root cause of action we can know next action. Nowton’s third law says every action there is an equal opposit reaction. I think every action there is almost equal reaction becacuse reaction has some energy loss.
Buddhism has not shown any miracles so it is highest scientific than any other at the same time highest spiritual because buddhists live for others even for animals,living beings.If u follow u cannot create.In meditation u need not follow