Branding, personal branding, corporate branding; everyone must brand themselves today in order to be seen and to take part in the continual construction of their identity in the spaces in which they exist and engage with the wider world. We talk about brands and branding as a way to identify particular items, products, companies, individuals, etc. And we use brands as shorthand to quickly understand where we are in the cultural landscape.
Cultural landscape is a term that is used in this book to mean a complex and ever-shifting space where consumers and brands come together to make meaning and exchange value. This space also becomes a map for constructing identity. As a topography, the cultural landscape encompasses both physical and digital spaces, as well as physically and imagined landmarks. As a consumer moves through this space (and everyone is a consumer), there is a continual exchange of capital that takes place. A consumer here can use brands and the physicality of the cultural landscape to move towards a place where they can align their self-identity (who they are) and their self-projection (who they want to be seen to be).
With this understanding of how brands and consumers interact in the cultural landscape, this book explores more deeply the concepts of power and ownership; because the exchange of capital, be it cultural, economic, institutional, etc, is at its heart, a shift of power. It does this by looking at key areas such as: gender, authenticity, brand activism, and how power moves within the cultural landscape. There is power embedded in each of these concepts. For instance, traditionally the act of consuming is often gendered as feminine, whereas production is considered male; brands that are able to take this knowledge and utilise it by leaning into gendered elements of their brand (pink for women’s razors), or by subverting it (selling car brake pads to women) can help promote an affinity with the consumer. When a consumer feels an affinity with a brand this can extend to them feeling like the brand is a safe space for them, and how brands communicate with consumers is directly tied to this feeling of refuge or brand safety.
Part of a brand being able to become a safe place for consumers is how they manage their authenticity. Now, authenticity is a term that is loaded in that everyone and every brand wants to be authentic, but how they do this is changing. One way authenticity is being striven for is in closing the gap between one’s self-identity and self-projection.; when who you are on the inside closely matches who you are on the outside. The way this is done has changed over time, where authenticity used to be seen as ‘being normal’ or real, then it moved to showing what ‘behind the scenes’ is like for brands and consumers. But now that everyone is curating authenticity, we seek authenticity at the edges of what’s acceptable. It’s as We Are Social notes, ‘we expect it to reveal chaos’. If we also consider authenticity to be something that can be bought and sold, capital exchange is also at play here, pushing out the edges of the mapped parts of the cultural landscape. It can be a dangerous, but rewarding place to put down roots.
Another way that brands seek to position themselves in the cultural landscape is in how they do social good. There are so many competing brands and products, it’s no longer enough for brands to have good Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and pay their employees well and have good internal policies, brands now also need to take a stance on social issues. Consumers are now increasingly boycotting brands based on their social stances, and this is more pronounced in younger generations. But brands must be authentic with their activism. Oil companies supporting climate change projects will feel off, and they need to follow through and not ‘wash’ the topic, which we sometimes see in greenwashing, rainbow-washing, etc. When brands can reflect consumers’ personal values, these consumers are more likely to move closer to the brand, potentially becoming ambassadors and helping the brand grow.
Topics such as gender, authenticity and activism are all directly linked to the flow of power within the cultural landscape. The complex interplay between the moving parts of the cultural landscape allows for power to flow, change hands, accumulate, and dissipate. While power can be concentrated in particular areas it is not only held by brands, and can move to consumers as they interact with and navigate these spaces. With this in mind, consumers now have even more say in the branding process, by contributing to the narrative structure and value of brands, challenging top-down ownership and leading to more co-creation between brands and consumers.
None of this is doom and gloom for brands. In fact, by being aware of how power moves through the cultural landscape, and, indeed, how the cultural landscape itself is ever-shifting, brands and consumers can both learn to better navigate the space. The key is knowledge, which is a form of power that can be leveraged by brands to put down foundations in the landscape, and to develop a narrative structure that allows for these brands to become landmarks used by consumers as beacons for navigating their journey through this shared cultural landscape.
Latest Comments
Have your say!