I am writing this from my couch on December 28th. The space where my new couch was supposed to be. It still has not arrived. Some things never change.
But looking back at the year in brand strategy, one theme emerges above all others: the distance between what brands say and what brands do has never been more visible, and consumers have never been less tolerant of the gap.
Facebook could not hide behind its mission statement when a whistleblower showed the internal research. Companies could not hide behind "we're a family" when four million people a month decided to leave. Brands could not hide behind purpose statements when their supply chains were exploitative and their products were unavailable. Travis Scott could not hide behind cultural relevance when people died at his show. Instagram could not hide behind its user count when it abandoned its own identity.
2021 was the year the gap collapsed. And I think it collapsed permanently.
Here is why: the infrastructure of accountability has fundamentally changed. Employees talk on Blind and Glassdoor. Consumers investigate on TikTok. Journalists have access to leaked documents at scale. Whistleblowers have legal protections and public platforms. The asymmetry of information that once protected brands from scrutiny no longer exists.
The era of brand management as reputation management is over. The era of brand management as behavior management has begun.
For strategists, this is both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying because we can no longer solve problems with messaging alone. Liberating because it means our work has to go deeper than the communications layer. We have to influence actual business decisions. Actual product design. Actual employee experience. The brand is no longer just the story. It is the entire operation.
My predictions for 2022, since everyone is doing them: brands will get smaller and more specific. The era of trying to be everything to everyone is ending. Privacy will reshape digital marketing more than any platform shift. Employee experience will become the new competitive advantage. And at least three more companies will try to rebrand their way out of a crisis and fail.
My predictions for 2022, since everyone is doing them: brands will get smaller and more specific.
As for me, I am going into the new year with the same resolution I have every year: find the white space. Ask better questions. Pet more cats. Sing more karaoke. And never, ever trust a brand that claims to be changing the world when they cannot even ship a couch on time.
Happy New Year.