Companies spent millions on their offices as brand expressions. The exposed brick, the free cold brew, the nap pods, the rooftop terraces, the curated art. The office was a physical embodiment of company culture, a recruiting tool, and a daily brand touchpoint for employees. And now it sits mostly empty.
I find this fascinating from a branding perspective because it reveals how much of 'company culture' was actually 'office design.' Companies that confused the container for the contents are now discovering that their 'amazing culture' was really just an amazing space that people enjoyed being in. Remove the space and what remains?
Trader Joe's generates more revenue per square foot ($1,750) than Whole Foods ($930) with zero advertising budget. The constraint isn't the limitation. The constraint IS the strategy.
The companies handling this best are the ones whose culture was never about the office. Fully remote companies like Gitlab and Basecamp have been building culture through practices, rituals, and communication norms for years. They never had a beautiful office to hide behind, so they built the actual thing.
The companies handling this best are the ones whose culture was never about the office.
The companies struggling are the ones whose culture was: we have a beautiful office, free food, and mandatory fun events. Take those away and you're left with... what? A Slack workspace and a weekly Zoom that nobody turns their camera on for? That's not culture. That's decay.
The future of employer brand isn't a space. It's a practice. How you treat people, how you communicate, how you make decisions, what you reward: these travel across any medium. If your culture needs a physical space to exist, it was never really culture. It was interior design.
Truffles and Barnaby are both asleep right now, which means I have approximately twelve minutes of uninterrupted writing time before chaos resumes.