Our thinking about Brand Culture has raised some big questions, both internally and out there in the world. New employees especially are concerned about some of the apparent implications of our new model of branding.
Fundamentally, they’re asking: does the theory of Brand Culture say that humans today are so shallow that brands and consumption are the font of our spiritual and ethical beliefs? Are we suggesting that brands have usurped religion and morality as the ultimate source and authority in people’s lives?
Whoa, scary thought! Glad you asked, we reply, because the answer is no. But the answer is far more complex than just no.
First, if there is one fundamental belief driving everything we do, it’s that people are
not shallow. They are anything but shallow. And we will neither hire employees nor work with clients who believe people are shallow.
Quite the opposite. The theory of Brand Culture comes from a belief that people are fantastically complex, rich, baffling, compelling, aspirational, and brilliant creatures.
We believe people are driven by a hunger for meaning. Provided, of course, as Maslow pointed out a long time ago, they’re not madly trying to avoid being eaten by a bear.
Here’s a provocative quote from one of our favorite anthropological articles from the book, Brand Culture.
“A brand may be viewed not solely as a sign added to products to differentiate them from competing goods, but as a semiotic engine whose function is to constantly produce meaning and values.” –Heilbrunn
If we assume that people are hungry for meaning, as evidenced in everything humankind ever builds, from towering Mayan ruins and gothic cathedrals to the elaborate ornamentation of everyday objects such as a Haida spoon, then doesn’t it make sense that the act of consumption itself would be a meaningful act?
Doesn’t it make sense that if our houses and our clothing and our jewelry and our canoes and our baskets and our body ornamentation have always, since time immemorial, been expressions of our values and our beliefs, that this would carry forward to the production and consumption of such things today?
Here’s another good quote from a different article in the same book:
“In a consumer culture people no longer consume for merely functional satisfaction, but consumption becomes meaning-based, and brands are often used as symbolic resources for the construction and maintenance of identity.” –Elliott & Davies
What Elliot and Davies are calling attention to is the change that’s occurred over all these millennia. And that involves the source of the meaning. Because an anthropologist will tell you that the culture a person was born into used to be the source of meaning. The culture used to give us our ethos (an understanding of how to act in the world) and our worldview (a picture of how the world really is). But in the post-modern era, fewer and fewer of us are given an ethos and worldview, and more and more of us are left to compose our own.
What do people compose their ethos and worldview out of? Well, it can be a
combination of many symbolic systems. It can be the values we learned from our parents and family, plus the insights we choose from various religions and spiritual practices, and maybe some philosophy courses we took in college. And maybe from the novels we read, the music we listen to, the art we see, the friends we keep, the places around the world we visit, the careers we work in, the movies we watch.
These are all potential sources for composing our own ethos and worldview, and our own sense of identity. Included in that mix, today, are brands. That’s all we’re saying. Brands are just one possible source of meaning.
Which leads to a third quote, this time from a paper called . “Brands as Symbolic Resources for the Construction of Identity.”
“ The self is conceptualized in postmodernity not as a given product of a social system nor as a fixed entity which the individual can simply adopt, but as something the person actively creates, partially through consumption.” –Elliott & Wattanasuwan
So our theory of brand culture proposes that today, in this current smorgassbord of beliefs and values, where people are shopping for both their values and their identity (sometimes quite literally), brands can step up and be a source of meaning. And when a person chooses to have a relationship with a brand, they are using that brand as a symbolic representation of themselves. They are using that brand to represent their own ethos and worldview.
In place of the concept of “empty consumption,” we propose that today the act of consumption is loaded with meaning and significance for people. And brands, rather than trying to manipulate people to buy their products and services, need to give people something far richer and more substantive than they have in the past.
Brands, and the experiences they provide, need to be just as meaningful as art, music, fashion, architecture, literature, religion, family, careers, friends, and all the other symbolic systems which people are using to both compose and express their values and their sense of self.
If anything, it’s brands that have been shallow, not people.
- Doug
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This is nice, Doug. Thanks for the update/clarification. I’d like to know more about what you think is positive and negative brand experience? Brands hold such different meanings for different people, and even more so for different cultures. It seems to me that many significant brands have a harsh backlash that often goes ignored or blows up later- what does transparency mean for today’s brands?
I am enjoying the blog- lots of great thinking.
Thanks, Ashly. Glad you found some usefulness in the post.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking about in terms of positive and negative brand experiences, but let me see if I can try.
When you talk about harsh backlash, here’s what I think of: Google, for instance, is still seen by most people as being a brand that’s sort of an anti-corporate rebel geek upstart cool brand. They gave people a better experience, and people have loved them for that. And they’ve continued to give new good experiences.
So the Google brand has a certain meaning (or, really, complex of meanings). The danger for Google could be that they might get too big and, rather than being an alt brand, they become The Man. This kind of happened to Starbucks, for instance. If people start to think of Google as a giant corporate machine, the brand’s meaning will have changed, and there will be backlash.
Apple is also facing this potential problem. They seem to be kind of teetering, meaning-wise. Microsoft’s Zune, for instance, is seen by some to be the alt brand to iPod’s giant dominant brand, which is ironic given how Apple and Microsoft are usually seen.
I think it’s important for brands to constantly monitor the meaning they’re creating. Of course they must be transparent, because you can’t fool anyone for long anymore. The internet has seen to that. But your meaning (which is different from your intentions and even your stated values) can shift if you don’t watch out.
It happened to Starbucks when they made their barristas nothing but button-pushers. To Starbucks, that was just good business. To customers, a lot of the magic, the sounds, the smells, the artistry, and the meaning was taken away.
Starbucks didn’t intend that, but that’s the reality they created. Schultz came back to try to restore the brand’s meaning. Starbucks still delivered a really good latte, but good product isn’t enough. And even though the latte was served quicker, many people felt the experience was inferior to what they were used to.
So it’s not just about good or bad, it’s about meaning as well.
And the meaning, ultimately, needs to come from the brand’s values. The values should be non-negotiable – the things that never change. The brand may find that it must sacrifice financially from time to time to remain true to its values, but never the other way around. Or else its meaning changes.
I don’t know, is this what you were asking about?
Yes, thank you- I think that hits it quite nicely. Talking a lot about a brand as a belief system is good, but I guess I was just interested in pointing out that you have to monitor both ends of that. Everyone can’t love you, but it’s important to know why people started loving you, especially when it’s time to grow or even just maintain the relationship. Maybe it’s just as important to know who doesn’t love you and why?
I ask about transparency mostly because of business practices or should I say, poor business practices. So often what we have begun to experience from a brand isn’t just their message or even product, but as you pointed out with Starbucks- how they treat their employees. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with everything once a brand grows so large and it seems to be harder and harder to measure actual, tangible value. We can’t ask brand advocates to “have faith” in brands the way we do with many of our other belief systems, we have to find ways to measure success and show them. It seems to me that we are going back to our experiences with the brand as continued proof of meaning.
Another thing that is important are people. I really like, “If anything, it’s brands that have been shallow, not people.” Brands are made up of people, are for people, are about people and often, they forget about their humanity. I think you summed it up nicely.
Great post- thanks.
Nice comments, Ashley. I’m impressed. And love your video of the new David Lynch photo book, by the way, on your blog (ashleysewart.blogspot.com).
“Why people started loving you in the first place…” – exactly! And then brands have to realize they can’t hold onto people because people will grow and change and the meaning a brand provides might not be pertinent anymore – to those particular people.
But others will come along and fall in love with the brand for the same reasons.
Think of some obvious example like Hot Topic. When my daughter outgrows that brand, she will move on. That doesn’t mean Hot Topic should try to chase after her. They should stick with their original values, but constantly look for ways to express those values in a relevant way to the people who need and want that meaning.
I remember Peter Moore, creative director of adidas america and the guy who co-invented Jordan and Nike Air at Nike, talking about the Dr. Martens craze in the early 90’s. He said adidas couldn’t chase that market because it wasn’t true to its values and vision. adidas had to be true to itself and wait for people to rediscover the brand when they were ready.
As for forgetting their humanity, isn’t that the biggest fault of any brand or person? It’s all too easy to do. We must construct ways to constantly remind ourselves of our own flesh and blood and bones.
- Doug
Thanks Doug!
I am coming by later today to meet with Melissa and Laura. Hope I run into you!
Ashly,
Sorry I missed you. Sounds like you had a good meeting, though.
- Doug