Social:Brand culture

Brand culture is a company culture in which employees "live" to brand values, to solve problems and make decisions internally, and deliver a branded customer experience externally. It is the desired outcome of an internal branding, internal brand alignment or employee engagement effort that elevates beyond communications and training.

A brand in order to be relevant to consumers and sustainable over time must operate much like a culture. A company must develop an ethos and a worldview that it believes in and then should act in accordance with it. Everything the company does - every product or service it offers, every public statement, advertisement, website, internal policy, memo and business decision it makes must be congruent with that ethos and worldview.

If the brand truly represents an ethos and worldview which are attractive to consumers they might embrace the brand as part of their own identity. They can join the brand culture and participate in that culture as a way of expressing to the rest of the world who they are and what they believe in. Schaefer and Kuehlwein talk about a brand and its followers 'living a dream' but also the brand's challenge not to 'burst the bubble.'

Hailing from the United States, over the past decade, the topic of brand culture has become increasingly prevalent. The books How Brands Become Icons (2004), Brand Culture (2005), and Cultural Strategy (2010) converge towards the concept of a brand as a cultural emitter. Their authors point out how brands embody views on the world and express models of myths, symbolism, codes, ideologies, etc.

Why are brands expressing their cultural aspects so pervasively now? For Jean- Noël Kapferer, this current dimension is due to several factors: the end of ideologies, the existential void of a consumerism society overly focused on accumulating stuff, the economic crisis, and more…all converging to send consumers on a quest for meaning. In a society losing its values, people no longer consume just to meet basic needs, but rather to find structural points of reference. Thus culture provides people with meaning behind their existence and behaviors – and consequently to their consumer buying and habits. If brands wish to meet consumers’ needs to buy with greater meaning, culture is required. Brands must play a role well beyond consumer purchasing. They must grasp major existential issues, provide symbolic resources, offer models for people to build and assert their identity. Fundamentally human, consumers don’t only ask to have something, but to be someone. To meet this need, businesses must go well beyond identifying insights. They must delve deep into their brands’ cultural resonance.

Globalization brings societies together faster and standardizes behavior, whilst accentuating brands’ cultural foundation. In a global market, with fierce competition and free-thinking, fickle consumers, culture contributes to a brand’s uniqueness and positioning. By stressing its existential dimensions, brands obtain greater public buy-in. In his analysis of globalization, philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky reveals two parallel points at the core of brand culture: …We observe a dual process of the « commercialization of culture » on one hand, and the « culturalization of commerce » on the other. Long considered a marginal economic sector and defying the logic of profitability, culture is quickly becoming a substantial and dynamic economic entity. Museums are exported like products; the economy of creative design, the entertainment market, the media and the internet have turned culture into a source of growth, revenues and jobs. Equally, the economic sphere is increasingly rampant with cultural signs. The economic sector is becoming « culturalized » as brands include a cultural dimension in their proposition. As CEO of DraftFCB and By Art, Nathalie Cogis points out: «…Culture is fundamental because it is the fertile soil where our desires are forged: the desire to be oneself, to be accepted, to be recognized, to stand apart, to be fulfilled, to love…Culture is the bearer of our most powerful desires, as these desires are collective: the desires projected by a society and with which people identify ». The acceleration of innovations requires brands to likewise renew and update, whilst maintaining coherence and consistency. As such, culture offers brands an entire repertoire of meaning and sensory, emotional and intellectual pleasures as a source for updating products. In this ever-changing context of rapid obsolescence and technological innovations, culture is a source of both identity and creativity.

References

Brand Culture by Jonathan E. Schroeder, Miriam Salzer-Morling

Building Brand Culture : Unlock Your Brand's Cultural Potential by Daniel Bo, Matthieu Guevel