If you are reading this, you probably know that brand purpose—once the shining city on the hill of modern marketing—has suffered an identity crisis. What started as an earnest attempt […]
Let’s start with the premise that brands—those buzzing, memetic, semiotic Frankensteins stitched together from consumer desire and corporate ambition—want Purpose. Capital-P Purpose. Not to be confused with lowercase-p purpose, which […]
Let’s start with the fact that you (yes, you, the reader, the human behind the screen, whether you are a CMO of a mid-sized DTC skincare brand or some poor […]
When I was young, during those interstitial years of university and master degree where one’s brain is a sponge for both Kant and the Kama Sutra, I worked as an […]
As someone who usually explores the intersection of brand purpose, brand activism and brand narrative, I’m constantly searching for examples of how companies and organizations imbue themselves with meaning beyond […]
Analyzing the Trump and Kamala Harris “brands” through the lens of contemporary politics is not unlike looking at the branding dynamics between, say, two ideologically opposed beverage corporations fighting for […]
We’re in an era where every company, from Pepsi to Patagonia, is relentlessly engaged in the existential wrestling match that is brand purpose, a concept that sounds suspiciously like what […]
By now, we’re all aware of the term personal branding, which in some circles gets thrown around like synergy in corporate boardrooms or intersectionality at liberal arts colleges—terms so overused […]
Let’s start with a reckless, absurd comparison, shall we? Creating a brand—designing a brand—can feel like sculpting a human being from the ground up, from a void so vast it […]
Let’s begin with some stage-setting, an establishing shot, like the slow pan of a suburban strip mall at dusk in a Coen brothers film. You’ve seen this place before. Not […]
