Logo, brand, well sure… I’ve got a website! This was how brand was born =) Marketing has grown from a nice to have to an essential step to creative concept, product and consistency in the American consumer market and most first world brands. As the landscape continues to shift and evolve, brand loyalty isn’t important to consumers in the same way. The corporate culture is overgrown and consumers want to know what corporations and product based companies are doing for them and what their personal care abouts are.
Consumers want to know before they buy – is this company contributing to sustainability, creating more jobs in the USA and will go as far as to care about how employees are being treated. There’s a demand for more from corporations by the people. Consumers are recognizing that their hard earned dollars are the buy-in that is holding companies together. There’s power and strength there and in realizing this, there’s a need for change.
If brand is not king but brand is still an identity attached to corporations and products, we are also finding that values are what consumers are shifting toward in weighing how they spend on products…. that leaves us with culture. Company culture, popular culture, ethnic culture – a set of values that one personally abides by and relates to others in their society, group or cohort that also abide by these values in collaboration.
Americans are ready for a shift and honestly it's part of our culture to always make it better. Searching to maintain and grow personal identity and more recently find identity in being American. This is why brand is still here, identity is so important to our society however, not in the same capacity. Always ask yourself, are you mistaking brand for culture? Throwing logos, colors, expensive ads out without targeting culture of a target group? Wrapping space and the internet with logos and messaging or are you saying something to the supporters? Are you standing with them in the message, do they feel that you're collaborating to build something together?
The answer should never be the same, so ask yourself every time! Are you mistaking brand for culture?