Our industry must reckon with how we’ve trivialised activism by turning it into comms strategy – only to abandon it
Nobody likes to admit we need marketing, but the discipline has always been necessary to match people with the products and services that fulfil their needs and desires.
It started simply enough, with us focusing primarily on brands’ features and tangible benefits. But as consumer society evolved, we moved on to symbolic benefits: identities, lifestyles. Finally, we began selling values: an ideology that hit its zenith between 2015 and 2022 in the era of “brand purpose”.
Eugene Healey is brand strategy consultant, educator and creator
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