The Third Era of Brand

The First Era: The Secret Life of Groceries

In his book The Secret Life of Groceries , Benjamin Lorr talks about the history of the supermarket. (I highly recommend this book to everyone involved in selling products.)

100 years ago, when you entered your local grocery, all the products were kept behind the counter. The clerk would pull down whatever you wanted from the shelves and hand them to you at the end of the transaction. They could recommend products, and you didn't really have the leisure to compare across items in the same category.

Shopping had human interaction at the core.

7-11 and later Walmart innovated a new way of buying - allowing the consumer to handle the products themselves and then check-out at the end of their shopping excursion. For the first time, consumers were faced with choice. How to choose which bread or milk. With no shop clerk to guide you, you had to decide for yourself.

This video provides a nice summary of this transition, through the lens of architecture.

Around the same time, newspapers were looking to sell ad space, and companies - without the knowledge of how advertise - would ask the newspapers to make the ads for them. Thus the ad agency was born.

What follows is 100 years of brand advertising through mass media to drive consumer purchase decisions on the shop floor - how to choose which milk.

In some ways, it could be argued, brands replaced human connection. Not just in store, but through the creation of entertainment such as Soap Operas, designed to around the commercial breaks to sell products, or with the products front and center in the narrative of the story.

We can call this the First Era of Brand.

The Second Era: The Rise of the Internet

In 1999 The Cluetrain Manifesto first appeared online. 95 thesis around how, as the very first line stated - "Markets are conversations" - and thus the Second Era of Brand was christened.

The internet allowed multi way conversations. Instead of being talked-at by mass media, we could have conversations around products. The rise of Amazon and Reddit (and YouTube and...) as sources of information to drive purchase decisions meant we had "perfect information" as the 2014 book Absolute Value put it.

Many decried the information age as the end of brands - "younger generations aren't brand loyal" or "the Amazon shopper isn't brand loyal". Nearly a decade later, Scott Galloway declared "the era of brand is over " at Cannes... in 2023.

The rise of "perfect information" does indeed aid people who are considering what to buy. We have more information than ever about just about every topic. Which is precisely why brands are more important than ever. At what point does "perfect information" become "endless noise"?

100 years ago advertisers were talking about information overload and the need to cut through the clutter. In the past 100 years that hasn't changed, but the sheer volume of information has. We need brands so that we don't have to think.

As Paul Rulkens puts it - The purpose of thinking is to stop thinking. Thinking is expensive - it takes time and energy. We can't actually analyze every decision we make in life. Brands exist so we don't have to agonize over every decision.

The Third Age of Effectiveness

Just two stages over from Professor Galloway, Les Binet , Dr Grace Kite and Tom Roach were declaring that we're in the Third Age of Effectiveness , likening the past decade of experimenting with "digital" advertising to the Gartner Hype Cycle .

Tons of research shows that marketing is effective again. After a decade of last-touch attribution tricking us into thinking the click is what caused the sale, we've learned how to use the tools in the right balance and mix to achieve true growth.

So I now propose to you that we are in the Third Era of Brands. A synthesis of the previous two generations - mass one-way communication, and conversations.

On Drunk Driving, Barbie and Changing Culture

In the 1980's drunk driving was the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-24. Harvard University then partnered with Hollywood to bring the idea of a designated driver to the public consciousness. Sitcoms like Cheers and The Simpsons started mentioning designated drivers and television campaigns ran across the nation. According to Harvard, 50,000 lives were saved between 1988 and 1998 thanks to this program.

This is proof that advertising can change culture, and nowhere is this more obvious than the Barbie movie. If you have 60 seconds, this short by Amy Odell is worth a watch:

In the early 2000's actresses "only wore safe, mermaid train gowns... because they wanted casting directors to look at them and see anyone instead of one specific character.

"But now it's 2023, viral moments are necessary for making a blockbuster. Margot Robbie is literally dressing like her character, and it's working. The buzz for this movie is overwhelming." - Amy Odell

She could have equally been talking about mid 2000's brands staying true to their advertising playbook, afraid to do anything that may rattle their carefully curated image. The transition from brands talking at you to brands participating in culture was one that took two decades, but is now with us in full swing.

Dr. Marcus Collins , author of the book For the Culture , argues that brands that participate in culture do better than brands that do not, and I agree. I've argued for a while now that so-called "purpose" campaigns are a subset of culture. They work if they strike a cultural chord. They fail if they do not.

The Two Schools of Advertising and the Third Era of Brand

I recently presented on what I call the Two Schools of advertising at a conference.

The American School is very data driven. Test and Learn. Landing page Optimization. A/B Testing. Advertising is an equation to be solved, and if it can't be measured it's not worth doing.

The European School is about feeling. How does the brand make you feel? And the proof is in the results. Hermes just passed Nike's market cap, and both brands are brands that engage with culture.

While I argued for big, splashy emotional ads - ads that signal "we've spent a lot of money on this ad and put our reputation on the line, so you can trust that we're not here to swindle you" (as Rory Sutherland may put it), the next presentation, by Barry Hott , was about the value of making "ugly ads." People thought it was hilarious how night and day our presentations were, but we actually agree on a lot of points.

Brands are flexible enough concepts to be high end one minute and ugly the next. The same way our concept of Margot Robbie is flexible enough to associate her with Barbie, Asteroid City, Suicide Squad, the Tonya Harding story and more - late night talk shows, gossip magazines and so forth.

If the First Era of Brand was a 30 second spot with a jingle, repeated over and over again on radio & TV, and the second era was an uneasy alliance with "perfect" information and social media - the third era is represented by the Barbie movie.

That is:

Lean in. Don't be afraid of what makes you, you. Be everywhere, on every platform (that matters). Collab with everyone. Be beautiful one minute. Eat hot wings until you ugly cry the next.

The untold trick of it all is - just be memorable.

If brands are truly a replacement for human interaction (or at least personal recommendations), then think about the people in your life that you turn to... when you want to laugh, when you want to cry, to look after your kids (or furbabies) and so on.

Why do these people come to mind? Probably because they remained true to themselves in a variety of situations - some expensive and beautiful, some cheap and ugly.

And the people in your life that you only interact with in one situation - they're not friends, they're acquaintances. People you run into at the bar. It's not until you engage with them in other situations that they become friends.

A brand is no more than that. It's what you think of when you want... a safe car, a healthy lunch, a mortgage, 2 day delivery, a caffeinated beverage... They can be true to themselves on a variety of platforms, in a variety of situations.

But if they have one ad that you see on one platform - you're not likely to think of them when you're out shopping. Just like you're not likely to think of your bar buddies when you need someone to look after your kids.

The brands that embrace the idea that they are a continuous character in changing circumstances will be the ones that win the Third Era of Brand.

They will...

• get in front of enough people
• with an entertaining enough message
• (with enough variation to make the message stick)
• on enough platforms that they're remembered

to form enough of a relationship with people that they think of the brand in the right situation.

... And if they do things just right, maybe they'll create culture too.

If Jared Leto is a flexible enough concept to include "cat", a brand is a flexible enough concept to include both the beautiful and the ugly.

fin.