RETHINKING YOUR ROLE

Finding a meaningful role for your brand

We are at a cultural inflection point: The last few years of tumult has instigated a mass cultural rethink of how we do things:

• Society: From questioning the cult of the billionaire, to highlighting systemic injustice, to battling to keep rights we thought were safe.

• Community: The rise of the collective - in art, in activism, through technology.

• Planet: The climate crisis forces action from businesses, politicians and even public figures.

• Work: From battling burnout culture, to the great resignation, to worker shortages, to questioning work all together.

• Lifestyle: A subtle shift from the perfection-chasing, outer-directed world of wellness to a bigger conversation about wellbeing - from mental and physical health, to financial wellbeing, to the home environment. 

• Media: The ongoing fragmentation of our media landscape and the ability to completely avoid brands within that.

• Technology: The promise of Web 3 - the chance to start again with different foundations (democracy / interconnectivity / openness / play).

• Economy: Rethinking the model to better serve all of the above.

This is creating a reckoning for businesses: Are you participating in all of this? Are you part of building a world we all want to live in?

The old model - competitive isolation - must give way for a new one: harmonious interconnection.

Businesses need to find their role in all of this:

• What does the brand mean in today’s cultural context? How is it showing up and participating?

• What is your role in society at large? How and where can you contribute?

• What are you doing for and with your audience?

• How are you improving your category?

• What role do you serve in the lives of your employees?

• How are you delivering all of that at every connection point - through products, services, content, experiences, ways of working, operations, supplier relationships and so on?

A decade ago the notion of brand purpose began to address this. In reality, it was often little more than an academic exercise - a new box on the brand pyramid. At its best it was used to align the organisation behind a shared goal; but at its worst it was used to create a set of marketing activities divorced from the realities of how the business operated and what it produced.

It’s time to take a deeper, more holistic view of the business’s role in everything it touches. Is it obeying the campsite rule: Leaving things better than you found them?