Brands belong to society

Since we left caves and started to organise ourselves in small troops or groups our human skills started to evolve drastically. Some say that fire was the key success factor for our species (to our branch of human species to be more precise) to become what we are today but some others say that it was communication and more precisely our language the definitive weapon that catapulted us to the absolute world dominance. Since then, we have been creating abstract concepts to explain events we didn´t understand, we created projections of ourselves reflected in the world around us, nature, universe through rituals, spirits, gods... This abstract knowledge transcended time and space and became what we call today culture.

Culture has many many shapes, art is one of them for example, religion, music, food... We can define hundreds of elements that are part of our culture. For thousands of years societies have become more and more complex adding non-human projections as part of our culture some of these projections offered of products, services, spiritual guidance... to us, some of them are even cult objects with millions of believers and supporters around the planet. How can a non-human projection have zillions of followers and the capacity to change the world? What kind of projection is this? We are talking about brands. Brands are one of the most ingenuous creations of mankind. They expand our world, our feelings, they give us purposes, they makes us dream, they make us change our lives, they can´t die unless we killed them for financial or legal reasons and they can change the world forever, for good or bad. This is not too different from a god, isn´t it? I ask myself a question, a brand with a big impact and influence in society should belong to a group of investors or should transcended management board rooms and belong to people as part of our culture?

So, if brands that have a big impact on society transform this impact on financial profit for their stakeholders, they should also have the duty of proving society with cultural value, isn´t it? This could be an entirely new universe of thinking when it comes to design a product, a service or a communication activity. Are impactful brands generating cultural value? Is their capacity to influence society limited to a product or a service? Are they doing enough beyond the simple transactional activity? Some of you might think “Yes, we are doing sustainability initiatives or yes, we are doing social responsibility programs”. Fair enough, now think if those activities are creating cultural value on our society at any level in these uncertain (VUCA) times. Are impactful brands influencing our culture towards our planet? Are impactful brands influencing our culture towards consumerism? Are impactful brands influencing our culture to be more collaborative and less competitive? At the end of the day we have to ask: Are impactful brands adding value to our world beyond simple transactions?