The Business of Aspiration: How Social, Cultural, and Environmental Capital Changes Brands

Lavishly funded by venture capital, startup brands are in the position to undercut incumbents on price and service, all the while being unprofitable. The result is that money-losing companies can go on undercutting competition far longer than before.

This is the new backdrop for brand strategy. Radical individualism is out, social connection is in. Brand focus is not on the end customer, but on the communities they belong to. Just as personas made individual consumers visible, the new brand methodology makes visible consumer communities and their co-dependencies and influences. New focus of eng

Brands targeting high-net-worth individuals need to reposition around work-of-the-human-hands artistry and excellence versus the wannabe-rich, in-your-face communication codes.

By their very nature, brands trade in status: they promise us to be younger, more attractive, smarter, happier, more accomplished, richer. For the longest time, brands operated according to Veblen logic that status is linked to wealth and desirability to price. Now we all have the opportunity to flip the script and link worth and values to our busi

Not long ago, wearing real fur was a signal of wealth and status. Now, it’s a signal of ignorance. In contrast, fake fur is inexpensive, but it displays status lent by awareness about climate crisis and importance of sustainability.

We are attention-seeking creatures, and when we go out, we “perform” for others, per sociologist Erving Goffman, and this performance gives “meaning to ourselves, to others, and to our situation.”

Knowledge gives products value, and creates a divide between those in the know and those who neither have this Chanel jacket nor know that Vanessa Paradis wore it.

In addition to being a great mechanism in learning how to orient, belong, and present oneself in the world, imitation is responsible for social cohesion.

Desirability of something is today decoupled from its price, and its access is decoupled from wealth. Instead, it’s coupled with social capital, environmental creds, cultural savviness, a story, belonging, and its transformative potential to make us better humans.