1: How did we get here?

In which, by way of introduction, I have a tiny crisis about the future of brand.

This is familiarly daunting.

It’s been a while since I stared at a blank page, and didn’t begin from a pre-existing deck I’d already written and wanted to adapt, or reposting someone else’s thoughts. How liberating, to start from nothing and make something. How soothing, at a time when most of the world is feeling that ache.

I wrote a summary of what I wanted this to be to some of my most trusted co-conspirators and it read:

I think what I want to write is a series of letters about culture, and what we’re collectively experiencing right now, and how that is shaping what we’re paying attention to - with the idea that brands can be built in a more thoughtful and productive way… without trend jumping, or playing into culture wars, or ostracising anyone.

That last part is tricky.

It goes against the advice I give when I’m working through brand strategy or repositioning with clients. I’ll often say: ‘brand strategy loves an enemy’. More than once I’ve thought that pissing off one group of people to reach your ‘tribe’ (can we make it a 2025 goal to bin off that word please?) was just collateral damage in niche-ing/segmentation. But I don’t think you can be awake in the year of our Lord 2024 (particularly after the beginning of this month), and not understand the damaging implications of feeding cultural division in the way that we have been to tell more ‘compelling’ (read: profitable) stories.

Even when we call this act gentler things in the world of branding, like ‘fostering community’ and ‘world building’, the output remains the same: some people belong here, others don’t. Perhaps that isn’t a problem, perhaps it’s even inevitable - but we’ve reached a point where we’re actively broadening the spaces in between us, flip-flopping between them for profit or gain.

This crystallised for me last week when on LinkedIn (where else?), less than 24 hours after the US election results, the inevitable ‘hot take’ appeared: ‘Trump won because of better branding’. My sentiments about sensitivity, timing, hot-take-ism and appropriateness aside, in one sentence my greatest aspirations for and worst fears about brand were confirmed: this thing that we do has the power to change the entire world.

Brand as a totem

We’ve been on the purpose-driven branding train for a long time (longer than feels comfortable to me - and I work in third sector). And while it’s been a helpful anchor to ground strategic thinking, tactical activation, and cultural direction to, this way of approaching brand can foster exactly the kind of self-congratulatory same-washing that late-stage capitalism and, more specifically, neoliberalism seems to thrive off so much.

So often, a brand’s purpose is a uselessly replicable statement about wanting to change the world conceptually through things you can acquire easily.

Take these classics:

Starbucks: Inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person one cup one neighbourhood at a time.

Colgate: Reimagine a healthier future for people, their pets, and our planet.

Sony: To inspire and fulfil curiosity

All really going in on that utopian dream, aren’t they? I can’t imagine why we still have problems.

The slight ridiculousness, and loftiness, of these statements (sadly) doesn’t often mean that product pipelines change, accountability reaches the highest echelons of organisations, or people receive life-changing care and support. But this way of branding can satisfy shareholders, fill website copy space and corporate reports, and maybe one day down the line, shift buying decisions for a very small proportion of the population enjoying the choice economy, and wanting to feel good about what they purchase.

And, for brands, the system is so appetising - tell (and crucially, repeat) a truism or a story that makes everyone feel good, leave the moralising to the water cooler or comments section, garner attention, spotlight the chosen ones that drink your Kool-Aid, thereby attracting more Kool-Aid drinkers. Rinse. Repeat.

So why am I trying to do myself out of a profession?

The stories we tell, and the truth

It shouldn’t be lost on any of us that every day a new piece of research is published about the values-aligned decision making and high standards that characterise Zillennials and Gen Z - it’s a particular favourite to trot out amongst the growing pool of culture agencies, ‘people experience directors’ (such a cool job title by the way?), and - let’s be honest - people like me. Like a breath of fresh air, our younger folk are stepping into their years of purchasing and ideological power, loudly hold some of the most progressive views in generations around things like climate change, gender, and sexuality.

And yet, early estimates in this election cycle show that only 42% of young people turned out to vote.

Read any social media or marketing blog and it’ll shout from the rafters that de-influencing is the next wave in the creator economy as consumers have less money in their pocket for ‘little treats’, and are more environmentally conscious than ever before about fast fashion and fast beauty. I’m sure you know what comes next - 2024 marks another profit-doubling year for SheIn after consistent growth in 2022 and 2023. If there’s one thing 2024 has taught us it’s this: human beings don’t always do the things they say they’re going to do. They don’t always act in perfect alignment with their deepest values, and - shock horror - sometimes they do things that outright oppose their values, too.

So why are we still writing brand strategy like most people aren’t - ever so slightly - a bit fucked up?

The purpose paradox

What do you imagine SheIn’s brand purpose statement looks like?

I’ve done the work for you, it’s: to make fashion accessible to everyone.

Argue with that, I dare you.

It’s actually scarily true. They churn out a product to a standard that allows them to price low. That product is designed and supplied based on what is trending, and what’s in demand. Their supply and shipping model means they distribute really effectively. Say what you will - and there’s plenty to say - about fast fashion, child labour, and copyright infringement - but you cannot argue with that purpose statement. SheIn is making fashion accessible to everyone - by any means necessary.

And for me, that’s the big, existential, black hole problem with purpose-driven branding models, and the era of brand building we’re in right now: you can almost always put lipstick on these many, many pigs.

What does a brand purpose become without ethics? Without context or accountability? What is the point of having accessible fashion brand that doesn’t credit the artists and makers it steals concepts from? What good is more people being able to get cheaper clothes when those making them had to be exploited?

And how!

So my thought for this first, slightly unhinged, slightly meandering letter is this: I want us - the people that do this thing, that build the brands, that write the strategies - to give as much of a shit about the ‘how’ as we have done the ‘why’. Anyone can have a ‘why’ - I don’t think we as a species have ever had a lack of motivation to create or innovate, even if those drivers were purely biological.

But, it matters how we find the people we want to commune around that thinking. It matters how we treat those people, how we speak to them, what we influence them to go on and put out into the world. More importantly now than ever, it matters how we treat people that don’t commune with us, and that aren’t aligned to our values.

It matters to grow in a more sustainable way, to stop chasing double-triple-digit and at-any-cost improvement of bottom line. It can still matter to win, and it can still matter to be creative, and excellent, and funny, and sharp. All of that goes into the ‘how’ too. But let’s place equal importance on purpose and performance - let’s imagine some new models for brand building that consider more than just impressing a boardroom with punchy straplines and tone of voice principles.

A ‘why’ without a meaningful and considered ‘how’ is just hot air.

And I never want to hear how Colgate is improving my pet’s life ever again*.

Til next time,

*His name is Finn, he’s a very good boi, and he will not let me brush his teeth, so we usually use Dentastix - not paid, not spon.