Brands are not gods, they’re navigational tools
This week, the World Economic Forum is hosting its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where the leaders of the world’s most important companies, countries and media get together to discuss world issues.
One item on the agenda caught my eye, a session entitled, “Brands: Today’s Gods?” In my opinion, that’s a misnomer. Consumers today don’t worship brands any more than they did 40 years ago. As long as there have been brands consumers have used them as navigational tools, not totems. Consumers need brands to help them determine which direction to take with their purchase decisions. The best brands know that in order to be of any use as navigational tools they must sharply define and clearly communicate what they stand for and why it’s relevant. This is how brands are supposed to work. It’s how capitalistic societies work. We’re not going to stop the train.
What we’re seeing today is the result of a world gone exponentially branded. Brand choices have proliferated at an incredible rate, along with branding channels. Branding doesn’t stop when you turn off the television. It’s everywhere. This means brand organizations have had to become more sophisticated in their branding to be of any navigational value to consumers. They’ve had to find ways to make maneuvering through brand choices simpler. Now, there is no question that as consumers we’ve always had an insatiable desire to define our identities with brands; younger consumers, especially so. This, too, was as true 40 years ago as it is now. The huge difference now, of course, is the sheer number of brands and branding messages to which our youngest consumers are exposed. Given this, to mitigate any concern relative to the branded world in which we live, it’s essential to teach kids how to see brands as the navigational tools they are – and should be – and, more important, how to use them to make the right brand choices.
Brands are not today’s Gods. They are and always have been navigational tools by which we determine which way we go in our buying and social behavior. Brands are supposed to provide good direction. It’s our responsibility to determine whether or not we follow.