The Death of Brand

Dramatic, but hang with me….

I've dedicated my entire adult life to the concept of the brand. Building them, designing them, working within them, and even re-branding them. From the small to the massive. But as I scrolled through my Instagram last night, I couldn't help but notice the absence of them. A total lack of brand. Which, I suppose, is a type of brand within itself.

Take an intro to art history class and you'll learn that every art period has a reactive art period. Realism followed Romanticism in the 1800s, which is a history we seemed destined to repeat in today's world of branding.

Social Media, Branding, and the Future

The early days of Social Media, Instagram in particular, were flush with romanticism. Foodies plated meals on perfectly white surfaces, eventually replacing that aesthetic with highly edited images of linen and wabi-sabi ceramic. Personal branding was king, and our Instagram grids lined up perfectly in monochrome. Larger brands followed suit.

Recently, things have started to shift toward realism. Saturated with unrealistic content, we craved something grounded. "Authentic" became a buzz word and our visuals shifted to prefer iPhone photos and quickly cut videos. The poorer the quality, the better.

Pull up a personal brand today and you'll see professionally shot images next to blurry expired film. Snippy single-line captions fit snugly next to essay-long rants. Branding is gone, and with it its consistency.

Which begs to question, if branding is dead, what will the brands do?

As with many art history periods, the way forward is oftentimes through the past. This means bringing back more user-generated imagery, behind-the-scenes content, and community-based buzz. Shifting products toward ones that are more fun to show on video than in stills, and giving the user an excuse to plant your brand in theirs.

In the end, if done right, the death of brand can be more like the rebirth of it. And who doesn't love a rebrand?