A Time to Build Tight Brands in the Chaos of Loose Cultures

To systematically build iconic brands, companies must reinvent their marketing function. They must assemble cultural knowledge, rather than knowledge about individual consumers. They must strategize according to cultural branding principles, rather than apply the abstracted and present-tense mind-share model. And they must hire and train cultural a... See more

Consider modern brand building. In an age where a brand can be built in days or destroyed in hours, the synthesised strategist knows how to combine:

• Traditional brand architecture with meme theory

• Cultural anthropology with real-time data analysis

• Community dynamics with performance marketing

• Long-term brand building with short-term cultural re

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That's right. I keep going. Something in what you were just talking about reminded me of, you talked about how you're about cultural futurism now. Is that a recent shift or how did you find that place? And what does that mean in how you work?

It is and it isn't. We've always been doing our work like this, where it's always predictive. The whole ide... See more