Far too many brands miss the reason and the recipe

Two alarm bell-ringing stats about the current state of brand building:

• According to a study from HAVAS – for roughly 78% of all brands, if they disappeared from the earth tomorrow, consumers wouldn’t really care and instead simply move on to another alternative. (Ahem).
• Meanwhile 85% of advertising has zero impact on brand health.

What does this tell you about the state of brand strength, equity and the tools employed to achieve it? Have we so myopically moved to embrace transactional behaviors that the organization’s most important and valued asset is inadvertently being starved of the fresh thinking and investment it so justly deserves?

As an Emerging Trends Report reader, you likely agree that a strong brand is vital to sustainable, profitable business growth. We know healthy brands deliver lasting competitive advantage as evidenced through unflinching brand evangelism, rapid uptake of new product innovations and reliable repeat purchase. Even through economic down cycles — because the brand matters to users by virtue of its integral relationship with the consumers’ lifestyle priorities and beliefs system. By definition, this is the polar opposite of a commoditized business where price and deal frequency are the most meaningful separators.

Accelerating AI conditions are forcing rapid change

The AI tech revolution is currently conspiring against organic brand strength. It is our singular calling here to fight these growing odds that conflate uniqueness, suppress acts of courage and marginalize the competitive playing field.

What’s going on here?

Every successful brand will labor to own a prominent place in the consumers’ collective memory, such that it is more likely to be top-of-mind in buying decisions, while earning a higher probability of credible recommendation and exerting greater pricing power.

This bulwark of resilience and strength requires that brands be simultaneously different and relevant. The challenge now is the significant shift in why and how people attribute “difference and relevance” to brands that matter to them.

Different: is amazingly less about how a brand performs or how it is made — and more about the perception of why it exists, what it believes and how it expresses itself. Understood purpose and mission loom large.

Relevance: is now primarily attributed to how well a brand is aligned with the consumer’s social values and cultural viewpoint. Fulfilling a functional need remains important, but it’s not the dominant factor.

While brand minders may be aware of these shifts, many are drawing the wrong conclusions – resulting in a marketing approach that’s inadequate for one of two diametrically opposed reasons.

The myth of “Mirror Brands”

The meteoric rise of social media fed by proponents who recite its tactical virtues, has stoked a marketing religion focused almost entirely on winning people’s attention — at the expense of earning the right to be part of their lives. We characterize this marketing behavior as Mirror Branding – meaning the brand operates as a reflection of whatever’s currently hot in popular culture. This is blatant pursuit of virality for its own sake, grasps at fads while routinely mistaking memes for lasting memories.

An example of au courant tactic-over-strategy can be observed in a well-known popular deodorant brand that created a new product tied to a cryptocurrency – in itself inspired by a meme featuring a dog – and launched a campaign on a day when that cryptocurrency is in celebration mode.

Through forcing an impression of difference, occasionally a Mirror Brand can briefly secure a spotlight in popular culture. However, without the hard work of building deep-seated, enduring relevance, they operate on a shorter fuse that eventually fizzles and goes dark. An example in the UK, Liquid Death, the brand built on irreverent disruptive marketing memes, has withdrawn from the UK market after less than two years.

The fallacy of “Shadow Brands”

The marketing misstep that focuses blindly on visibility while failing to deliver any tangible emotional or cultural connection – this is the purview of Shadow Brands. Consumers are aware of their shadowy presence, but remain unclear about their beliefs, deeper substance and mission.

Shadow Brands aren’t necessarily irrelevant, but they can also fade away under pressure. Without a meaningful difference, it’s harder to maintain traction in hyper-competitive markets. Hate to say it, but this is a large and growing group and includes many distressed legacy brands, and a significant percentage of DTC brands that start to struggle after a promising start.

We must raise our ambitions on investing in brand strength and deeper meaning

To be more than a Mirror or Shadow, brands must construct enduring memories around the things people love and love to share. This is much easier said than done and requires full commitment to:

• Conveying a point-of-view that is both meaningful and distinctive.
• Adding value to consumers’ lives – supported through every expression and every experience.
• Showing up in imaginative, inspiring ways that help define current culture.

Specifically, we should be focused on building “Iconic Brands”

Icons are never created in a heartbeat. It takes continuous commitment and investment over time. For example, the Dove brand’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” that celebrates self-esteem among women has been an evolving work-in-progress since 2004.

There is, however, an accelerant. Emergent has been a long-time proponent of integrated communications – the lashing together of multiple channels and disciplines to create a more effective and powerful brand. While the core principles of integration remain important, it’s simply not enough anymore. Radical changes to the marketing and business landscape mean both thinking and practice should evolve. This necessary leap forward is Interrelated Marketing.

It’s no longer possible to earn and maintain growth and business expansion through one-way communication alone. Ambassadors, evangelists and advocates must be enlisted as agents to act on the brands’ behalf. This will require mastering an intricate interplay between consumer-centered earned, owned, and paid media to create a flywheel that propels a brand towards Icon status.

Interrelated Marketing is designed to deliver this outcome by uniquely blending the four key drivers of modern brand success:

1. Unlocking cultural relevance through compelling narratives at the intersection of a cultural tension and truth about the brand that shapes the conversation AND resonates with key audiences.
2. Earning a solid enduring reputation by capitalizing on the influence of brand fans, respected expert voices and relevant credible institutions in authentic ways that cultivate positive, lasting renown.
3. Designing reciprocal relationships through personalized experiences and value exchanges that customers will share with the brand.
4. Driving desired response by satisfying an identified consumer preference with an effective, believable solution and call to action.

Many brands treat these four R’s — Relevance, Reputation, Relationship and Response — independently. But the magic happens when they are harnessed to a common purpose. That is the end-product of Interrelated Marketing: a connected ecosystem of expressions and experiences, where every piece of content, every social post, every event and every initiative builds seamlessly on the last.

The incredible impact of Icons

A reminder: marketing’s primary purpose is to build brands with the strength to deliver lasting competitive and economic advantage.

Despite what some pundits would have you believe, this requires setting the bar higher than simply mirroring an audience’s social media feeds or buying eyeball attention. Instead, the goal must be to earn a prominent, persistent place in a person’s memory by having a positive, enduring, meaningful impact on their lives. This is how brands achieve iconic status.

It’s a prize worth fighting for. Icons deliver impact via increased penetration; deeper, stickier customer relationships; stronger competitive defenses; and more powerful, resilient marketplace momentum. Finally, the bottom-line is the bottom-line: financial returns that are exponentially greater than the costs of its creation and delivery.

For businesses who are ready to make this commitment, Interrelated Marketing provides the right strategic drivers: every idea, every action, every behavior should demonstrate an obsessive focus on unlocking cultural relevance, deeper meaning, mission, belief systems and earning reputation that attracts strong 1:1 relationships.

Brands that succeed in conjoining these four drivers, with the right kind of creative thinking, will generate an impact that is unreasonably greater than the sum of the parts and eventually will win not just a larger share of the market but a greater share of the future.

The sea-change urgently pushing this agenda to the forefront of your planning

• “The transformative potential of AI is not short-form video or treating it as a glorified search engine. It’s to advance human intelligence and what we’re capable of as a species.”

AI is upending how consumers discover brands, and large language models could soon be the window to a company’s reputation — as cast from its own point of view.

LLMs — the smart interloper in between brands and customers

The arrival of Agentic Advisors is at once favorable to guiding consumer decisions and more confident purchase outcomes by delivering unprecedented analysis on the efficacy and superiority of products. The unintended consequence, however, is the parallel rapid commoditization of categories that will be supervised by super intelligent machines who neither care about, promote nor recognize the emotional equity brands work to create.

AI advisors will come between you and your customers and future customers, focused entirely on clinical analysis of product bona fides, formulations, sourcing standards, and authentic delivery of promises. This means the strength of the brand relationship will be paramount to your future, alongside managing the narrative product story LLMs express about your business.

• Your future can’t be left in the hands of AI opinion alone. Your brand’s relational strength and emotional equity through its Iconic status and reputation form the critical alchemy of your future business success.

If this article has you thinking and wondering aloud about the right path to follow, use the link below to air questions and start an informal conversation.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Culture has changed and we must change with it…

For the last decade we have celebrated, described, deconstructed, and devoted countless articles to extolling the who, what, why and how of earning brand trust. It is essential to belief and acceptance of what brands want consumers to understand about their narrative story. It stands at the front door of why consumers join a brand as believers rather than merely episodic (and occasionally fickle) purchasers. 

We have alternately described this marketing era as the trust/sharing economy of the last decade. As evidence, consider the generation of disruptive apps like Yelp, Uber, and Airbnb that created massive markets built on legislating trust by integrating:

• Commitment to transparency
• Implementing layers of reassurance
• • Shining a spotlight on every facet of an interaction

These systems provide an unprecedented amount of perceived control, allowing us to trust complete strangers. Significant levels of value have been generated, and thus how the trust economy prospered. There’s also an unexpected consequence to an engineered trust optimization strategy. Stay with us.

With this foundation, we have charted the benefits of radical openness, of higher purpose and mission as evidence of deeper brand meaning and respected values. We’ve described the beneficial outcomes of revealing an organization’s inner mechanics — how you do what you do. Show it, demonstrate it, don’t just claim it. The theory at work – alongside deeper understanding and disclosure, trust will break out. Some of this thinking by the way, remains true and relevant.

• Our strategic brand-building game plan was constructed on authoring control and certainty for consumers who also crave it. It mattered because risk of disappointment is a fundamental barrier to what brands most want: a consumer who believes and accepts their story and acts on it. However, times have changed. Dramatically so. Unprecedented shifts and moves have occurred that re-calibrate the entire foundation of what ‘trust’ actually means and how to acquire it.

Make no mistake, trust remains foundational to building business, but how we define trust has moved. What’s changed?

The 2025 Brand Trust Analysis

We’ve observed the rapid decline of trust within shifting consumer culture. Look at it this way: when trust in people evaporates, you lose trust in nearly everything. 

We lack trust in our government 

We don’t trust our neighbors

We don’t trust our educational institutions 

We may even lack trust in our friends

In sum, we are far less trusting today than we were before the trust economy came to the forefront. The strategic answer lies in a fundamental recognition of societal shifts and how trust is defined. 

Let’s start with a more humanized way of looking at it, according to a recent report from the Concept Bureau:

“[Trust is] the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.” An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust, Academy of Management Review

For the most part we’ve arrrived at a place where people generally trust no one. Certainty has disappeared. Familiar anchors of traditional beliefs, meaning, values, history and security have been diminished by unprecedented events that are connected to how people see themselves and the rules we have been taught about how society is supposed to operate. In sum:

• Our long-standing traditions and values are under assault.
• Even traditional family ties have weakened as people seek guidance from other external sources, some AI driven.
• Respect for a fairly distributed quality of life, and embedded empathetic behavior towards others is in retreat.
• The past vanishes behind us while the future loses its luster and in its place people begin to turn inward.
• Promises and values we have long held in high esteem wither in a sea of disruption.

We know from research that technology has changed how we place trust, and it appears we’ve been successful optimizing away perceived risk.

The key evolutionary trust insight

Trust isn’t really centered in control. It was never about perceived safety, transparency or insurance. In reality, trust is the opposite. It is a willingness of people to make themselves vulnerable to someone else, precisely when they can’t be controlled.

Trust is about embracing risk rather than mitigating it away. Nothing can be accomplished without trust, and if we’re building a brighter future, this a dilemma we need resolve now. If we know trust is inherently tied to vulnerability, then we need to be looking where/how people are allowing themselves to be vulnerable.

The new trust building engine is embracing vulnerability. Here’s the guidance:

1. From proof to empathy: trust as a human exchange

Traditionally, brands earned trust through evidence from third-party endorsements, scientific validation, guarantees, warranties, ratings, and reviews. Those things reduce risk.
But vulnerability asks something different — it requires empathy and shared humanity.

Brand translation:

• Move from “credible authority” to “we see you — we understand your fears, hopes, and imperfections.”
• Brands demonstrate this by acknowledging uncertainty, showing learning in progress, and inviting co-creation rather than just broadcasting behind-the-curtain details.
• Example: A pet food brand that decides to re-evaluate its sourcing practices and brings the brand community along for the discovery process.

2. Vulnerability as an invitation, not an exposure

Vulnerability creates relational depth. When a brand lets its audience in — shows its inner workings, admits mistakes, or opens its process — it transforms from provider to partner.

Brand practices that operationalize this:

• Open book storytelling: Show the making, the sourcing, the human decision trade-offs. Don’t sanitize the narrative; show the nuance.
• Interactive co-creation: Invite consumers to test prototypes, weigh in on reformulations, or help define what improvement means.
• Employee voices: Authentic, unscripted stories from the people behind the brand humanize the enterprise and show vulnerability through human faces, rather than corporate polish.

3. Reciprocal vulnerability: trust as a shared act

Consumers also practice vulnerability — every purchase is a small leap of faith. They reveal their personal values, fears, and aspirations in what they choose.

Brands can mirror that by showing they’re equally invested — willing to take emotional and ethical risks in service of the relationship.

How that looks:

• Values leadership: Taking courageous stands on cultural or environmental issues, not because it’s safe, but because it’s right for the brand’s identity.
• Responsiveness: Listening publicly, not privately — using consumer feedback to shape decisions in real time.
• Long-term consistency: Following through over years, not campaigns, turns initial vulnerability into mutual confidence.

4. Trust 2.0: from control to connection

Old trust mechanics were built on risk management, scripted messaging, brand guardianship.

The new model invites brands to trade some of that control for coherence: shared stories, aligned intentions, and human-scale openness and honesty.

Strategic shifts:

Old Trust	New Trust
Control the experience	Share the journey
Risk mitigation	Emotional openness
Credible authority	Reciprocity
Transparency	Progress
Proof	Presence

5. Framework for brand application

The Vulnerability Activation Model:

Stage	Brand Behavior	Consumer Response
Reveal	Share authentic challenges, trade-offs, or learnings	Curiosity, empathy
Invite	Engage consumers in shaping or validating change	Participation, belonging
Align	Demonstrate shared values in action	Identification, loyalty
Sustain	Continue showing progress over time	Enduring trust

Vulnerability is the next frontier of innovation. This vacuum and its generative force really push us because on the surface, it feels counterintuitive. However, there is simply no other way to create the deep connection people are seeking.

If this article has you thinking about how the evolution of trust building strategy, the importance of vulnerability to your brand and business, use the link below to ask questions and have an open (more vulnerable?) and honest conversation. We can help you build the roadmap.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

How you convince ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini your brand should be recommended

For the first time in the history of modern marketing, a machine holding vast global insight and knowledge on every product, category and company, steps in between the consumer and the brand to provide authoritative, easy-to-understand, supported advice on what products to buy. The voice is empathetically human, like your colleague at work, except it possesses more knowledge than all of the world’s experts you could amass in one place at one time — and offers its assessments in a conversational, two-way forum.

LLMs will remember every conversation they have with you.

Imagine what it will understand about your preferences, needs, wants, desires, problems.

It responds to any query in seconds.

Asks follow-up questions to refine its ability to send relevant help.

Is available 24/7 and never gets tired of hearing from you.

It may offer to complete a purchase on your behalf.

Consider what this means when a third party (not your brand) with this kind of knowledge, credibility and influence makes recommendations and offers specific guidance, diminishing any need to first visit your brand web site or expend mental calories tracking down other sources of valued information. Further, it validates conclusions and can support its advice with a treasure trove of data. (Of note, it is vital to your business success to gain LLM trust early and control how your brand is perceived).

We know consumers desire certainty in purchases above all things because every human works predictably to avoid the possibility of making a bad decision (read disappointment).

• Could agentic AI become a recuring advisor for help on purchases? Yes, and it is.
• Could this evolve into a relied upon, habitual “go to”? Likely, unless it violates our requirement for trusted reliability, privacy and confidentiality.
• Will this impact your marketing and strategic plans? It must. Read on.

Global unseen Internet traffic, more than 50% of it, is constantly crawling media, government, industry, academic, political sources, and your web site to inform itself – so in light of this vigilant non-stop digital data mining…

What does AI know and believe about your brand and product line?

Your company?

Your technology expertise?

What will it say about your formulations and claims?

What will it recommend?

Is the narrative accurate?

Is your brand story presented in the best light possible?

What portion of your key messaging came through?

What’s missing?

Will your trade partners trust this on-tap source and rely on it for decisions?

This is not a phase, a passing tech fad or a fringe novelty. It is now business infrastructure, and it’s about to change everything including your approach to strategy, marketing support and the comms game plan.

Note, not all web site content and related information about your business and brand is AI friendly. Brand stewards have a responsibility to do everything possible to better inform and influence the assessments AI platforms are making, thus assuring the brand story is correct, complete and compelling.

Is this for real? Is this now or later?

Marketers may wonder if Agentic AI is a near-in priority. While the use of AI has touched hundreds of millions, the role of agentic advisors in everyday life may appear to be a tertiary phenomenon. We are moving past that at lightning speed. More and more people are turning to their LLMs for advice on everything from gym workout regimens and relationship tips to pet care guidance and what car to buy. The time is now for brands to proactively manage what LLMs believe about their brand and business.

What proportion of consumers are already using AI for advice on purchases?

• U.S. consumers who use agentic AI for online shopping: at least 39% from a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers. Within that cohort, 47% of them turn to AI for product recommendations and 55% for research. A related stat — Adobe Analytics also reports a ~1,200–1,300% year-on-year surge in AI-search referrals to retail sites.

• Overall consumer AI usage: Menlo Ventures’ 2025 consumer study reports 61% of U.S. adults used AI in the past 6 months — and ~1 in 5 are using it daily (we believe this is evidence of habit formation).

• Shopping-specific: WSJ states 42% of consumers are using generative AI for shopping guidance, thus why it’s time to adopt GEO “generative engine optimization” strategies to show up correctly in various agentic AI platforms.

Bottom line: Across trusted sources, the active shopper-use is ~35–45%, with Adobe’slarge U.S. study clocking in at 39% overall and 47% for recommendations. That’s not a niche.

Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO) is here

Various LLM platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, et al) look at brands and businesses differently, their assessments and recommendations are not all the same. Brands need to start now to inform and influence the various LLMs so their stories and messaging are showing up fully, correctly.

LLMs may not get the full picture —unless we make the effort to guide them

Risk of inaction: AI answers can omit brand differentiators including sourcing, formulation standards, ingredient nuances and science-backed claims – especially if facts aren’t consistently managed and reinforced across various channels of media LLMs scan (press, reviews, Q&A, retailer PDPs, etc).

Without proactive optimization (GEO), AI can misrepresent your brand strengths and story.

As agentic AI becomes the “first advisor” consumers consult, what LLMs recommend or state can sidestep CPG brand messaging, claims, and nuances—creating risk if left un-curated.

AI models learn from “earned media” because they trust the authority

LLMs train on publicly available text—reviews, articles, press, forums—so what’s being said about your brand and your competitors can shape an LLM query response. Managing that narrative is the new strategic game plan. Chatbots are a lot like people—except they are unimagining, unfeeling, electronic ones. The things you need to do to win them over include making your product stories clear, detailed and easy to navigate, clearly explaining your company’s vision. Additionally winning positive third-party endorsement through coverage in the news—which is also relevant to how you inform your real, human customers.

The Agentic Optimization Engine (GEO) game plan

Assessment and ongoing LLM management

This is an evolving story because LLM crawling is constant. You need to know what the various LLM platforms think they understand about your brand and competitors, and to stay on top of that over time. New online GEO management platforms have emerged to help brands track LLMs, gain knowledge of what they know and monitor how this evolves.

LLMs are swayed by narratives

1. Long form, conversational content alongside linear stories with timelines and Q&As are AI crawling friendly. Recency is an issue for AI, so company blogs are an important part of the plan because they are constantly updated.

• Third-party authoritative blogs and e-newsletters matter as AI assigns authority to the voices of outside sources that verify the stories and claims your making. Are you working actively to gain attention in third-party publishing channels?

• Product pages with detailed descriptions and narrative guidance resonate because this is what LLMs are doing – making recommendations on what products to buy so they are evaluating your product bona fides while making their recommendations. Thus why fact sheets, timelines and Q&As are equally important on the LLM crawling journey.

• Earned media is a significant and vital part of this ecosystem because LLMs consider editorial reporting to be a credible and authoritative source. Now your earned media strategies perform double-duty – not only building credibility and awareness of what you want consumers to believe about your brand and business from a respected third party , but also to inform LLMs. Note that AI is crawling wire service platforms so now the decision to put press releases out on the wires gains added importance as a source of AI guidance and understanding.

• Web sites should be optimized to provide easy navigation of content that is AI friendly. The good news: you should be refining your product stories for guidance and clarity anyway, so even if you’re not ready to accept that Agentic AI is here and happening, your work to make these improvements will be good for business anyway.

• Research confirms paid media is less important in GEO guidance because LLMs don’t assign the same credibility and authority to self-promoting, short form messaging. While you hope and may believe an ad is breaking through, a direct recommendation with authority from an LLM platform will be more intrusive, compelling and persuasive than an ad.

Authority and credibility are key because LLMs are looking for that trusted quality to train themselves. Now is the time to pursue GEO with intention, before LLMs start to regiment what they think about your brand and products. In short, don’t just assume they will get the story straight.

Emergent can help you.

• We can perform an audit of your current communications, content, PR and web site to assess where you may have weaknesses in the GEO journey.

• We can help you optimize content plans and programs to address AI friendly information while improving your product communications and education.

• We can help you identify and pursue the right third-party blogs and e-newsletters, seeking to place favorable stories about your brand and products.

• We are highly skilled in earned media and can create immediate improvements in your earned media strategies and placement rates to optimize editorial attention and outcomes.

Use the link below to arrange an informal get acquainted conversation or to ask questions.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Announcing our new service for mid-year brand fine-tuning and 2025 Planning!

Emergent has designed a customizable 7 Point Brand Health Tune-Up™ keying in on the most important strategic concerns to enhance your business’ results. This may be the insight you’ve been looking for to unlock your brand’s growth potential!

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

New direction on the evolving role of brand marketing

For the last 50 years CPG and retail brand building has been focused on chasing awareness. The theory that top-of-funnel recognition will lead to consideration, and if the brand is persuasive while spiraling further down the funnel, a consumer purchase will occur. Leave it to the impact of evolving culture and the presence of existential, environmental threats to shift behaviors and push the funnel off its pedestal. A distinctive new path to brand building has emerged and we will unpack it here. The good news: we are entering a period of unprecedented brand engagement, but the rules to success are decidedly different.

Remarkably the century old thinking that underpins the funnel was first developed in 1896 by E. St. Elmo Lewis, owner of a Philadelphia-based ad agency, who published the first theory on “consumer path to purchase” he called AIDA – short for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. By 1924 this concept had morphed into what we now refer to as the Purchase Funnel. Yes, there have been a few modifications along the way to accommodate digital and social media channels, but the basic view of awareness as the golden goal has traveled with the adjustments, until now.

The funnel is dead, long live the funnel…

The fundamental weaknesses of the funnel model have been exposed, as follows:

• It is grounded in transactional thinking that positions consumers as walking wallets
• It fails to address the dynamics of how real brand relationships are built
• Assumes that consumers will behave in a linear fashion on the road to purchase

It’s fair to say that the focus of brand marketing work and investment has leaned heavily on top of funnel activity, frustrated somewhat by the demise of mass media, the splintering of consumer attention across channels and their uncanny newfound ability to avoid it all. Of note, tactical sophistication here in digital media eyeball aggregation isn’t helped by inherent strategic weakness.

Here’s the truth as we now know it. Consumers – especially Gen Z and Millennials – no longer operate in linear fashion. For one, the purchase isn’t the end game, rather it is the starting point. Consumption is now an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community participation and advocacy.

• Old brand world: defined by conventional advertising, digital or analog
• New brand world: defined by content, events, experiences and fandom

What are you risking if you continue to be an awareness chaser?

Declining relevance: your brand and business are seen as exploitive, possibly manipulative and transactional.

Lacking authenticity: your brand expresses promotional hype over user help in a world now longing for trust and deeper meaning from the brands consumers care about.

Incidentally, this is why Emergent exists. We focus on new strategic approaches that are grounded in culture and the latest consumer insight. Today, when consumers buy a product, they are actually buying your story and not a stock keeping unit (sku).

Edelman Trust Barometer sheds light on the shift

Edelman’s latest trust report revealed a remarkable change in behavior that has significant implications to sound brand building strategy. People have a strong cognitive bias for post-purchase rationalization. In fact, we also know that 95% of the time, consumers are driven by their efforts to avoid making a bad decision, or to experience disappointment.

Edelman’s research confirms where the action is: 50% of consumers now conduct the vast majority of their brand research AFTER purchase and not before. What’s more, 78% are looking for credible proof and validation that they made the right decision. Turns out post purchase is when people are most open to brand engagement.

You might be wondering what’s behind this change…

1. The systematic dilution of trust and belief based in part on the absence of any prevailing brand value system, higher purpose or real, obvious evidence of same.
2. The precipitous rise of vulnerability, uneasiness over a perceived lack of personal control authored by political, social and environmental stresses. 
3. Too many brands think all they have to do is invoke the word trust in their marketing and they are automatically, well, trusted. Not so. Trust is earned not acquired. Always deeds more than words.

Right below the surface people look for safety and security in the midst of accelerating experiences sponsored by uncontrollable events around them. This manifests as a desire for deeper meaning, purpose and trust – now at an all-time premium. Call it heightened expectations for visible, demonstrable, easy-to-see brand values and a courageous point of view.

So how does it work now?

Consumer pre-purchase research leans into the influence of brand social communities where they uncover member reviews, experiences and hopefully advocacy. Thus, the strongest predictor of a thriving social strategy is the rate at which members connect with each other vs. the brand’s self-promoting posts. It just makes sense – people believe and respect the voices of their peers before they accept assertions claimed by brands.

Brand marketing is now about cultural influence

The great news – consumers in a post-purchase focused world are primed for engagement. No need to wrestle them to the ground with look-at-me overreach. Here’s directional advice on best practices.

1. Trust creation: you should be conveying and demonstrating your brand purpose, mission and identity beyond the product on offer. Brand actions, reinforced through communication and education, helps you earn trust. 
2. You’re working to confirm: competence, ethics, values and relevance to your consumer based on their identity and aspirations, which you endeavor to help enable.
3. You deploy: credible and trusted voices in the form of “people like me” (via User Generated Content), scientists and academic experts, brand tech experts and employees.

It’s exciting to know that following purchase 79% of consumers engage in branded content, will participate in brand activities and want to connect on your social platforms. Your brand marketing should be operating to help feed and encourage this behavior. Trusted brands are repurchased, they secure loyalty and encourage evangelism.

If you’re interested in exploring the implications and strategies of a post-funnel marketing environment, use the link below to ask questions. Discussion and exploration can be enlightening, and we would be honored to talk informally with you about this exciting topic.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Welcome to dangers of the Replacement Economy

Dear readers,

Our last post, “Your Brand’s Soul is the Engine of Competitive Advantage”was happily the most popular Emerging Trends Report’s article we’ve published in more than a decade of covering marketing, emerging trends and communications best practices. Perhaps the topic resonated because it is such a lynchpin to sustainable business growth, yet so often a neglected and under-developed foundation within the strategic brand-building toolkit.

Today, we continue that story by turning the page to speak to retail brands about an enormous shift in the retail landscape that creates tension, subtraction and balance sheet challenges. Much of our narrative hangs on a rethinking of how retail businesses should strategically curate their operations. This insight entails a liberal dose of soul surrounding the heart of how retailers create and deploy the shopping environment and fulfill their retail brand mission.

What’s also at stake here for CPG brands is a tangible concern. These retail houses of distribution can help you synergistically tell your story or they may end up being complicit in furthering commoditization conditions that every business wrestles with every day. Thus, it’s vital we take this up as an extension of what we started on the merits of brand soul investment.

A change in the retail universe that prompts re-evaluation, re-stage and new strategy

What happens when literally everything you consume can be had (or replaced) efficiently and cost-effectively without ever visiting a store? The historic retail paradigm of location, convenience, assortment and price dilutes alongside the ease and economy of the endless, digital shelf.

If we’re being painfully honest, I think we can agree the ever-widening, transformational impact of this business challenge is not surprising since so many retail channels demonstrate a woeful absence of sufficient surprise and delight.

You can usually assess what a retailer’s business model and strategy consists of just by observing how people behave when they enter. Are they happy, hovering, lingering and investigating? Or are they in a hurry to find whatever is on their list and get out. For the most part, you will see people moving quickly and with purpose to hit their needs and leave. That’s not just “pressed for time” happening – it’s also due to an absence of magic, emotion, joy and adventure (dare we say authentic soul) once inside the front door.

Let’s start with what people really want

Consumers look to brands and retailers to provide ideas, inspiration and solutions about how to live better and achieve their dreams. They yearn for deeper meaning while residing in a world that’s losing its grip on purpose and values. This is far beyond just the array of products you shelve. Yet most retailers believe they are in the stocking and selling business.

What’s more, for the most coveted consumers who are highly active in a consumption domain, these ‘heavy users’ are highly likely to fuss over and chase very high standards of experience and meaning-seeking. Are they being properly served?

Shoppers who are highly involved brand fans and self-identified experts can be found in many product and lifestyle categories, including:

Food

Wine

Pets

Dating

Travel

Outdoor

Cars

Fashion

Cosmetics

But what do they really get when shopping a retail footprint? The typical store environment is in danger of becoming a well-lit inventory “warehouse” – one that serves as a category specific shelfing farm only to facilitate quick selection and fast transactions. Take note, this sounds eerily close to a misguided and losing chase of e-commerce strengths.

• We wonder, does a focus on omni-channel strategy in some way create an excuse for allowing the brick-and-mortar shopping experience to wallow in mediocrity because more curated online buying options are being served?

Too often, conventional retail is designed to stock, display inventory and transact sales. What if instead you created an experience so enjoyable and rewarding that people wanted to stay, explore and engage?

When anything and everything can be had at a click, the concept of sustainable retail strategy needs a refreshed higher purpose in response. The future of retail in today’s commodified transactional environment will hinge on infusing the shopping environment with –

Meaning

Mission

Socializing

Adventure

Discovery

Leisure

Belonging

In honest self-assessment, does your retail experience offer functional access to an inventory of products arrayed in aisles and cases, or are you working to build a small universe that transports people to a new place, time, scene, memory and experience?

Movie makers are masters of carrying us to an immersive experience. Borrowing a chapter from the art and craft of movie-making – can you design “dream districts” through creating and orchestrating a scene:

• Williams Sonoma as a Napa Valley kitchen with winery culinary experience esthetic
• Bass Pro Shop as an homage to outdoor lifestyle imagery at every turn
• Trader Joe’s manifests their “scours the earth” promise for unique food experiences
• Kiehl’s as an old-time apothecary shoppe
• Eataly as an Italian farmers market
• Costco, “It costs us a lot of money to look this cheap” – for purposeful warehouse-ness

The big question organizations need to decide up front is whether they want to pursue incremental tweaks to their brand experience that are copyable, nonproprietary, and unsustainable. Or do they have the confidence to swing for the fences and pursue a game-changing innovation maneuver?

Please know the brand equity and purpose process is never finished. Instead, it requires constant upkeep, evaluation, and vigilance to maintain and manage, lest it fall out of sync with changing cultural conditions which is increasingly epidemic as shopping behavior evolves around us.

Retail presents a living, breathing opportunity for storytelling in a space

If the business mindset is preoccupied with traffic, velocity and transactions, you may end up passing right by the humanity that’s walking the aisles. People innately resonate to art, creativity, emotion, visuals, imagery and sense of place.

A retail environment can be constructed to serve as a canvas for story. The living, breathing embodiment of an experience they will remember and seek out. When does a grocery store become a haven of culinary adventure? Can a pet store celebrate the endearing bond and collaborative life with four-legged family members? Is it possible for a restaurant to serve more than a menu and become a salon of social discourse and food learning?

Or we can relax while believing a popular offer of ”buy one get one” for a bag of chips constitutes sustainable volume advantage and call it a day?

Designing a story is the starting place

When you focus on the person you wish to serve and use that as a guidepost, relevant creative ideas and options begin to flow. Story platforms can help inform your thinking about the experience you wish to create inside your front door.

“Welcome to the world of manifested dreams…” says Karma and Luck Las Vegas

My wife Kristen is a spiritual person. She happens to love jewelry that is grounded in a deeper purpose and mission. Kristen recently discovered her retail muse on a trip to Las Vegas. Karma and Luck describes itself as a “partner on the journey to lead a more meaningful life.” She characterized the store shopping experience as a trip to Bali, immersive and Zen-like.

They don’t just sell jewelry, they offer a story and promise of higher value well beyond the attractively designed yet affordable bracelets, necklaces and other pieces – all of which have carefully curated narratives attached to them that store sales staff generously share with guests. When she selected items for purchase, her knowledgeable guide took her to the center of the store and placed the products inside a Sound Bowl where a brief ceremony “cleansed the jewelry of any negative energy” while imbuing her purchase with – yes, Karma and Luck. This was not a transactional retail environment.

Her visit was a transformational shopping adventure. No surprise, she is retelling this story to all of her friends, while helping me understand this is now her go-to for gifts. Start with the story, think more deeply about the customer you wish to serve and go from there. Importantly, the Karma store design, ambiance, music, scent, and elegant product packaging serves as mechanisms to reinforce their authentic higher purpose.

To start, here are eight story themes relate-able to the human journey:

1. Interest in belonging to a community of like-minded people with shared values
2. Deep need to love and be loved
3. Desire for greater meaning, purpose and sense of mission
4. ​Drive to nurture, enjoy and protect family life ​
5. Pursuit of fun, laughter, adventure and entertainment
6. ​Requirement for affirmation and validation of status, wealth, and prestige ​
7. Love and appreciation of art, esthetics, great design and beauty
8. Intention to lead healthy, fulfilling, enjoyable, long lives

Do you see the possibilities of story strategy underneath your retail experience? We can help you design a powerful narrative that takes your brand miles ahead of simply being an inventory stocking depot. Use the link below to start an informal conversation about your brand’s future.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.