Branding: positive moments
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These challenging days have made all of us reconsider where our true priorities lie and where all our future efforts should be focused.
By Carles More Creative Director at Crowd
001 · The role of brand communication
We specialize in positioning a brand as a media platform that functions as the bridge between them and their target audience.
We provide services as well as products, always trying to create connections across the divide that exists between business and consumer. This can be achieved by mixing in different channels which not only involve the central experiences, both offline & online (e.g. print, websites, apps, social media, live streamings, radio, tv…) but also where and how they are experienced (e.g. billboards, events, computers, tv, mobile phones…)
002 · Adapting to new languages. Context is king.
Branding nowadays is more than just communication. Branding is about planting the little seed in the mind that generates positive memories that ultimately define your values and ambitions. It’s about putting people at the center of everything. It’s not just about creating a conversation; it’s also necessary to offer people something of value to their lives and businesses. Brand perception is what others think and say about you rather than what a brand actually does or doesn’t do.
Context, not content, define values. Society and brands occupy the same space. Both are observers and creators of contexts now as well as the content. They need to work together to be adapted to our new realities. Audiences need to have a louder voice and more control in the media. We have to give people different tools to use in different ways in their lives (content, entertainment, education, platforms…). Tools that engage them with the brand. They are the drivers now so we need to support them.
Brands have a new position in the world now: to be responsible for others; to be real and honest. Brands need to be sold as imperfect because that’s what humans are. They need to be more transparent. They need to stop creating social pressure around the concept of the perfect life and instead promote the concept of being authentic and learning from others. Stop pushing ‘living your best life’ and start encouraging valuing your actual life, your stability and your security.
Forge symbiotic relationships between brands and people. Connect one-to-one, not one-to-them. Evolve together.
003 · Blurring the line: be closer and inspire.
Go hand-in-hand with people rather than saturation communication. Create interesting and relevant content, activations and tools. Empathy is not an add-on, it’s an essential value for brands and people to work together.
004 ·Thinking in the future; understanding the present and the past.
Questioning is the way to evolve. New challenges, new ways and new opportunities for the new era. Our job is to translate needs and imagine how the future could be for the present and future generations.
005 · New economic scenario. Decreasing and decelerating is not bad
The idea of constant, massive growth is a concept that needs to put aside. It’s how we got to where we are now. It caused a huge impact on the planet and our lives and that damage needs to be undone. Those that are slow to make this change will not be judged kindly in the future. We need to dismantle our rigid structures. Be smaller. Be more agile. Collaborating with others is the smartest way to save the present and change the future. Optimization is a skill for the next age. The Economy of Values where new systems will define the process.
The relentless drive and superficiality of our consumer world and the facelessness of globalization demands a response. We need more profound, ethical and cultural experiences. We have to start to propose intelligent and authentic ways for how business and the world can live together. If you can’t promote your product or service, promote your brand culture. Step back to leap forward.
More than ever, consumers will choose brands they hope they can trust. The audience will choose brands they already believe in based on how they have seen the brand act before. They won’t seek out new brand communities.
Brands need to create a culture, both inside and outside, that promotes their values as well as their value to their community. Companies and institutions need to offer opportunities that stimulate and support the full range of emotions and states of mind that their audience experience. They can decentralize the economy with the power of cultural intelligence.
Rather than separating children from adults to try to change the world, it is more efficient to empower the children so they can change the world. The mentality of collaboration, creativity and conversation will be present in our ways of doing things.
In an unstable world where governments are failing, it is brands that have the opportunity to occupy that vacuum and offer services and products for the benefit of society.
006 · Futuretainment
New generations are using different channels to consume different kinds of entertainment. Digitalization offers us the chance to create immersive worlds which are only in our imagination. Places to connect people all over the world where they can be together. Streamlining, not excess, is best for us and our environment.
Users can have different digital identities. Different selves. The power of brands and their channels impact on our different versions of ourselves. We can create different versions of us to interact with others. We can live in different worlds. Worlds created by people, platforms created by brands. Worlds to share, to create and to debate in a collective and connected society.
Carles More
Creative Director & Designer at Crowd
carles@crowd.st
Crowd
A partnership of creative innovators focused on making connections between audiences, institutions, established brands and emerging businesses.
Creating symbiotic relationships.
Crowd is a network of distinct individuals who are constantly working on creating new relationships in contemporary digital society.
It’s more important, and practical, to have access to the means of doing something than to actually possess it. Being flexible and having a network of associates is our philosophy. We don’t want to just provide a service, we want to be your partners. Partners in a symbiotic collaboration with our clients.
