There’s this word “authenticity” that’s been rattling around boardrooms, marketing decks, and influencer captions for so long that it’s become almost intolerable, like a pop song you once loved and […]
The paradox of “brand purpose”, and please forgive the scare quotes but they’re unavoidable, given how the phrase has been dismembered by consultants, ad agencies, and well-meaning middle managers into […]
Here’s the part nobody likes to admit: you don’t shop anymore. You vote. Every purchase is a ballot. Every checkout line is a polling booth. Not the solemn kind you […]
There was a time , and not so long ago, if you squint, when Made in Italy functioned like a religious indulgence: you could slap it on anything, from a […]
If you are reading this, you probably know that brand purpose—once the shining city on the hill of modern marketing—has suffered an identity crisis. What started as an earnest attempt […]
Let’s start with the premise that brands—those buzzing, memetic, semiotic Frankensteins stitched together from consumer desire and corporate ambition—want Purpose. Capital-P Purpose. Not to be confused with lowercase-p purpose, which […]
Let’s start with the fact that you (yes, you, the reader, the human behind the screen, whether you are a CMO of a mid-sized DTC skincare brand or some poor […]
When I was young, during those interstitial years of university and master degree where one’s brain is a sponge for both Kant and the Kama Sutra, I worked as an […]
As someone who usually explores the intersection of brand purpose, brand activism and brand narrative, I’m constantly searching for examples of how companies and organizations imbue themselves with meaning beyond […]
Analyzing the Trump and Kamala Harris “brands” through the lens of contemporary politics is not unlike looking at the branding dynamics between, say, two ideologically opposed beverage corporations fighting for […]
