Meet the Future Of Branding - Debranding
This article from Jasmine De Bruycker for Fast Company Design strips back the layers on branding methods currently en vogue (product placement, native content, social promotion) and urges companies to invest in their brands genuinely. She reminds us that "Traditionally, branding is based on the idea of what differentiates a company from competitors... As branding is, fundamentally, just a form of communication, it will never disappear. And it shouldn't. But the focus will shift."
She instructs companies to listen up: "Instead of throwing money at yet another branded content campaign, go back to the original notion of a brand. Fine-tune your product’s quality, design, and its durability. Become a producer of shoes again instead of surrogate spirituality. It will make your life, and consumers’ lives, simpler. Don’t throw a new product on the market if it’s not intrinsically better and more durable than what already exists. We don’t need more branding; we need fewer, better-quality products. People will find you."
In the modern world she explains that for many people "The only way to be truly subversive is to buy less stuff. Turn purchasing power into the power to leave untouched what you don’t need. We’ve reached the saturation point, we are unhappy—we are stuffocated. But just as consumption became a way of life, so too can non-consumption."
Inspirational.