Long read 7 mins

A brand-driven culture builds upon the anthropological concept of culture and promotes a new way of thinking about branding. The first traces of this concept surfaced about a decade ago. Anno 2020 it is proving to be the best way forward for more and more visionary and future-proof organisations. Culture is the foundation on which a purposeful brand can be built. A strong meaningful connection between people, both internal and external, forms the base from which an appealing brand develops.

With this way of thinking, be aware that your brand is always represented by real humans, their feelings, beliefs and ideas, and not by means, such as logos and marketing campaigns. Those are mere semantic representations of your brand. Such properties indeed are important for saliency, recognition and confirmation of ideas. With a brand-led culture, it starts with recognising that humans are a social and emotive species. Most people intrinsically want to belong to and identify with their tribe, unified by a strong 'culture'.

Branding f*cked up the world and made people work harder, longer and purpose-less.

Hang on, before I start off with my pledge for a brand-led culture, let’s first get back to the more fundamental question of why try to create a brand in the first place? This leads us to over a century ago when companies started to mass-produce and distribute their stuff. In those days, moving from direct to indirect transactions, the need to identify products from others emerged. Without a brand, it was not easy to identify a certain product from others. Later on, a need to identify was complemented by a need to differentiate one brand over the other based on features and benefits and by doing so making a quality statement. People not only had to be aware of your brand but also understand the specifics the brand has to offer. Again later, with the introduction of mass advertising around the sixties of the previous century, emotional branding entered the marketing arena. People were lured to buy a certain brand not only based on awareness and features & benefits. By then branding could create preference and make people buy stuff based on the psychological concepts of identification and aspiration. In about a century the marketing profession has turned into an industry using all sorts of wicked psychological tricks to make people buy more and consume more stuff. With the introduction of digital brand marketing about a decade ago, it even became possible to hyper-target consumers 24/7 and influence not only their behaviours but also shape their belief systems, and even political views are for sale through clicks, likes and fakes. The fact that we now live in a global economy, with unicorn brands dominating our markets, would arguably never have happened without the power of branding. One could say that branding has been tremendously successful and impactful. It has helped fuck up our economy by making people work harder, longer and without purpose. And the ecology? Don’t get me rave about that!

For the money, just like a hooker or mercenary.

For the last 35 years, I have worked as a branding professional. During the first two decades of my career, I believed brand marketing to be the most exciting profession. I learned the tricks of the trade at giant global consumer firms and for many years I successfully created brands in the international confectionery, petfood and tobacco markets. Understanding the psychology of consumers and pursuing strategies to make them want and buy brands is what kept me going. However, in the last decade, I increasingly lost my pride and trust in brand marketing. Nowadays I am not so proud any longer, at times I even feel ashamed. I believe our hyper-capitalist world with over-consumerism, the giant environmental mess and skewed distribution of wealth is created by shareholder capitalism, with branding as its secret manipulator. I can only blame myself as I have been using my professional skills, to help companies in selling more stuff nobody really needs. Not only did I push cigarettes, which is at hindsight an odd crime, I have also advised banks to sell crazy and misleading financial services, food companies to sell sugar candy, and industrially produced empty foods, making people sick, obese and rotting their teeth. To name a few of my sins. I apologise. Sorry. I was not aware of my misdoings in those days. I did it also for the money, like a prostitute or mercenary. I thought that branding was the ultimate symbol of the free markets and that the success of the Western world depended thereon. I thought consumers were able to make their own well-informed choices and that brands should stay away from politics. Now I am more awake. And I confess my views have changed radically. Branding can be so powerful that it can determine what people think and do. It can even lead people to destruct their health, their social communities and their home planet. And that’s exactly what has been happening the last one or two decades. Branding has contributed to the ecological, economical and social challenges the world nowadays faces. On the other hand, and on a more positive note, branding can also influence people to start doing the right stuff. That’s why about 10 years ago I started my mission to use branding as a force for good. And that’s why about 2,5 years ago my company BR-ND People became a B-Corp.

We are destroying our world with the same strategies that initially delivered so much progress.

Traditional branding strategists advocate the creation of a brand to influence consumers to buy more products and services. And even better, by creating a strong brand, people would be prepared to pay a higher price for the same product. To me, this is all true, but it is thinking from the previous century. It has partly contributed to the ecological, economical and social challenges the world nowadays faces. Such strategies have led to consumerism, globalisation, monopolisation and ultimately to the widening of gap between the rich and poor. It could even lead to the destruction of the world as we know it. And probably it will, if we don’t take action for the better.

The Corona lock-up period we are now in for the last 7 weeks, has caused a near shut down of business activity. This provides leaders of organisations with the wonderful opportunity to consider what has led to this crisis and what new ideas should be embraced once the crisis is behind us. This shift in thinking means for your organisation that the challenge is not any longer about creating more financial value for your shareholders, but by delivering more valuable solutions to society, to your communities and to your employees and beloved ones.

Such questions have been floating around in the more progressive and liberal parts of the business community in the last couple of years before the Coronavirus outbreak. Increasingly, business leaders are discovering that selling more products and services by following traditional business principles is leading to a dead end. And now with this crisis, lets’ bank on the idea that visionary leaders indeed will find the courage to restructure their organisations as a force for good. Creating demand for messy products and services which do not deliver valuable solutions for people and the planet will become a no go. The price our civilisation has to pay for consumerism and globalisation in terms of ecological, economic and social damage simply is not worth it. We are destroying our world with the same capitalist strategies that initially delivered so much progress and welfare to people.

Culture-based brands have the potential to transform companies into business as a force for good.

From the inception of BR-ND People back in 2007, we have been thinking in different directions and we were and still are today highly motivated to progress thinking in the profession of branding. We are convinced that in modern branding, the organisation's inner drives and purpose must be fully aligned with external brand values and promises. Moreover, developing and strengthening the inner culture will become the key to developing successful brands. In our view, creating a brand based on (latent) customer needs and wants is not good enough any longer. To be successful, to cooperate with partners and to help solve the challenges the world is facing, brands must be shaped from the inside out. Such brands will need to embrace a cultural shift in their thinking. We believe culture-based brands have the potential to transform companies into business as a force for good. And win the hearts and minds of the people. 

This also requires a hefty rethink on the process of how to create such culture based brands.  If not aligned, your brand will fail and be a fraud.

In the old days, branding was about creating an attractive brand positioning in the brain of the consumer or customer. Such an image was not necessarily aligned with the culture or identity of the organisation offering the product or service. Consumer research revealed clever insights into the psychology of the target. With clever and high-frequency advertisements and claims those soft spots were activated. And even today this is how many brands are managed. But brands are not any longer build only with advertising. In modern branding practice, it is the whole customer experience that counts. If anything is not aligned, the brand will fail and be a fraud.

This is where we can use the concept of cultural anthropology. Modern anthropology teaches us that all human behaviour is symbolic in nature. Humans are not designed or evolved to be occupied with economic transactions. To the contrary, humans are creatures of meaning. And through meaning, we belong to tribes or even larger social groups. For our survival, we evolved into a highly social species living in larger groups. In those groups people are connected through a common understanding of our environment, what’s the purpose of life, who we are, what we are here for. In such social groups, behavioural and meaningful habits developed and were mirrored and unique tools and symbols were developed to express and strengthen the bond between people. And to differentiate one group from the other. As such we are giving shape to our individual and group identity.

The same meaning that attracts customers will also attract and keep employees.

Over the years I have spoken with many leaders of organisations and it stroke me that their main issue is not to develop a brand aiming at attracting customers. Sure, that’s also important. But their main challenge is how to mobilise the energies and motivation of all co-workers. How to unify and get them behind a purpose worthwhile working for or to live by? How to make them happy, motivated and creative. How to make them receptive to change, or even better, be the change. Bear in mind that all sorts of employee research worldwide confirm that something between 70-80% of employees is not at all engaged with their work and employer. Many of them are even sabotaging progress. Also in relatively developed countries in Western Europe. They do the work for the money and they couldn’t care less if their company is successful or not. It’s not their concern. Leave it to management, it’s their role. They get the big bucks anyhow.

This is not acceptable, it is unfair to the people and also the success of the company is greatly impaired. What I believe is that in such disengaged environments, it is the culture that is not worthwhile and people are often empathically neglected by the leadership. Maybe senior management has already tried to do something about it by writing down a mission statement, the vision and some values. And maybe they have asked the internal communications manager to create an internal campaign to activate such values. But almost always they have not succeeded in engaging the workforce, suppliers and customer with such an exercise. People simply don’t care if the message and meaning are communicated top-down by senior leaders, often passersby, who don’t really inspire.

A culture-led brand (and also a brand-led culture) starts with jointly defining what the brand is all about. And you better make it an inspiring affair, otherwise, nobody will bother. And once that is done, it's a matter of living the brand. Which is another topic, even so important, but probably more difficult as it means changing your behaviours...