#15 – Do brands have a work?
In a saturated market, selling requires generating culture. Brands that understand the “work” as a strategy through drops, collaborations, and ephemeral proposals turn marketing into exposure and relevance into a competitive advantage.
Brands are mainly for selling, but as we all know, the mechanics of selling are increasingly complex. That’s what forces brands to become more sophisticated, to offer a value proposition that is increasingly interesting in a world where being interesting is getting harder and harder.
In this new playing field, brands are encouraged to have a point of view, beliefs. What we’ve been calling purpose, which helps connect affinities between brands and people.
But a purpose is nothing if a brand doesn’t express it. Just as an artist has no point of view if it doesn’t materialize in their work.
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To be relevant, you have to appear in society. Or put another way, to appear in society, you have to be culturally relevant now, which means, for brands, starting to think more and more artistically: observe, point out, share, provoke.
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It's true that there are brands that, with full right, can be considered as if they had a work of art. High fashion brands like Balenciaga or furniture brands like Vitra. But I'm talking about a different logic: the work as a marketing plan.
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Brand drops, ephemeral pieces that are displayed and then stored away, have an exhibition logic very similar to museum collections. Something you have to go see before they take it down.
A couple of weeks ago, we were actually organizing at Summa the All Brand Breakfast, focused on the ephemeral, and we saw how brands were organically looking for new exhibition spaces for their drops, for their most special offerings. Pop-ups and temporary exhibitions are increasingly sharing similar rhythms and offerings.
And just like artists, creators, or writers are recognized as they exhibit or publish seeking cultural resonance, isn’t a brand a better brand as it launches proposals that seek cultural resonance? And what if the real competitive advantage was actually having work?
