The New Challenges of Brand Management

The image and meaning a brand conveys have never been entirely within the owner’s control; they have always been in dialogue with the world around them. While marketers painstakingly craft brand messages and creative campaigns intended to appeal to their target customers, it’s the customers who actually make meaning and, consequently, shape a brand’s reputation. In the social media age, that meaning has become ever more freighted with cultural and political implications, not only for brand image but also for customers’ own identities and reputations. This newly mediated discourse between consumers and brands has created new challenges for contemporary brand managers to not merely steward a brand’s communication and intellectual property but also manage the brand’s meaning as consumers themselves shape the meaning of the brand to relate to their own identities.

In today’s hyperconnected world, social networking platforms have become our primary means of learning about news events and keeping track of our social groups. These contemporary town squares serve as a public forum where people can both debate social issues and negotiate consumption decisions.  In fact, someone’s take on a political matter might be quickly followed by a post about their new purchase in our newsfeeds. The two have become so intertwined that a brand selection can often be considered a vote cast on a social issue.

These associations are publicly constructed and policed through the same channels where people curate their identities — such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The result of this dynamic is that today’s most powerful and sought-after brands have been situated as the marks that most accurately represent a consumer’s cultural identity. These brands have evolved from lovemarks to identity marks that people use to communicate to the world who they are and to which cultural communities they subscribe.

Brands have leaned into this shift to establish stronger connections with consumers and woo potential buyers who subscribe to similar cultural views.

Successful brands identified a point of view beyond their product categories as a way to project ideological meaning and attract like-minded consumers. This symbiotic relationship has increased consumers’ expectations of brands. It’s not enough to trust that your product performs well or that your customers are emotionally connected to the brand; today, that “love” is conditional. Consumers want to know where the brand stands on social issues; they want it to pick a side to ensure that their consumption is congruent with their representation of self.