There's a Brand Identity Crisis Looming in 2022

If 2020 was a time when it became untenable for any marketer to avoid the deeply polarizing issues that upended life around the globe, from racial justice to sustainability to politics, 2021 forced a grand level of clarification about what a brand ultimately means. Marketers felt the force of consumers' explicit demands to take declarative stands on the issues they care about. Consumers' identities were more tightly entwined with deep-seated political views. Brand affinity could no longer be driven by pure product preference. Everything from shampoo to coffee to car purchases reflected a deeper meaning. There's no going back for brands or consumers at this point; brand choice and personal choice are inseparable. In 2022, the challenges of communicating a brand’s value, identity and purpose will fully come to light as the shocks of the past two years settle into a “new normal.” “There is no doubt that the role of the corporate brand took on new meaning in the past 18 months,” says Daniel Binns, CEO North America and global director of partnerships for Interbrand. “No longer could companies sit on the sidelines of social, political and cultural issues, and a broader set of stakeholders, from employees to customers to end users, demanded they speak up.” With some companies wielding greater communications and monetary power than many sovereign nations, the expectations of their corporate behavior and contributions to the world have never been greater. It’s an uncomfortable place for even the largest brands. By definition, taking sides means leaving someone upset and on the outside—and brand stewards are loathe to accept even a single consumer’s rejection. Meet the CMO+ In 2022, the evolving role of the CMO is something to watch. The "CMO+" phenomenon means that a brand's marketing head will take on more responsibilities as C-suite roles converge. For decades, everyone from marketers to agencies to platforms has been calling for silos between sales channels to come down. Well, that can only happen when the person steering the brand's messaging embodies that unified stance. "We're increasingly seeing the CMO role morph into hybrid 'chief marketing and communications officers,'" Heide Palermo, vp, head of community at Adweek and editor of Inside the Brand, has noted to me. Expect to witness more roles for chief marketing and customer experience officers as well. It's a reflection of how marketing as a function is starting to own much more internally, from managing insights to product development. It all demands a degree of authenticity in a brand’s voice, which many leaders have not honed sufficiently. That’s because brands have not spent the time to truly understand who they are and what they stand for in this much broader context. “Welcome to the exploding world of ‘corporate purpose'—the why behind the what,” Binns says. “We saw hundreds of companies launch new purposes in this last year attempting to define their role in a massively changing world. Along with that came new aspects of their brand identity to signal the change to the outside world. But the struggle companies have is not defining their purpose, but living up to it.” A new era of brand purpose At the end of 2021, Facebook metamorphosed into Meta as it grappled with regulatory and consumer backlash amid continued controversy over its use of consumer data. Facebook, though, is truly an outlier whose experience has little relevance for most other brands. The real test for brands can be found in the examples of comparatively less significant marketers. Take the divergent experiences of Motorola and Airbnb. While sales of its smartphones have been on the rise, Motorola has found it difficult to lock in younger consumers who are open to alternatives to Samsung and Apple, which respectively represented 20.3% and 15% of smartphone sales in Q1 of 2021, according to research from Gartner. Motorola's image is largely wrapped up in being the "low-cost alternative”—and affordability doesn’t stir hearts. Brand affinity requires signs of principles and purpose. So, Motorola looked for subtle ways to bring a greater sense of emotional attachment, adding support for the pre-colonial Amazon languages of Kaingang and Nheengatu in Android 11 phones. It’s the kind of move that can open a minefield of reactions. It can be interpreted as an opportunistic co-opting of the sympathies of earnest people calling attention to the plight of those historically impacted by colonization. Potential backlash aside, such gestures could also fall flat in the face of indifference from most smartphone shoppers. But if handled with subtlety, Motorola’s addition of Indigenous language accessibility can be reasonably viewed as a small, respectful appeal to people concerned with addressing global issues such as the deleterious effects of colonialism on native peoples. Motorola was careful to avoid appearing exploitative; there were no "too on the nose" portraits of tribal representatives with the company's new Edge smartphones, for example. Did it work? Too soon to tell. Wait for Q3 2022, when we'll be able to compare this past year's sales. After all, if brand purpose ultimately doesn't deliver a tangible benefit, marketers might well go back to paying lip service to consumers' larger interests. Igniting a spark in consumer attitudes takes more than a single branding campaign. If you see Motorola finding new ways to continue a conversation about support of Indigenous people, it might suggest that the way it communicates is finding some traction. “Brand identity is consumer identity,” says Sol Marketing founder and CEO Deb Gabor. “Consumers are thinking even more about how brands are part of their identity. 2021 has shown us that it's even more important than ever that brands really, really show up with a set of values and beliefs. Those values and beliefs are a magnet that draws them to people who share similar values and beliefs.” Getting to consumers' 'gooey core' Another surprising success story can be found in Airbnb, which experienced its strongest profit and revenue growth in Q3 2021. After finding its bookings plummeting and its users and hosts in rapid retreat in March 2020, the brand drove a steady turnaround that any travel brand would have been envious of. In 2020, Airbnb’s positioning of “people belonging everywhere” shifted naturally to “belonging locally,” when most air travel was limited. Then, in 2021, as travel opened up, it began positioning itself as offering longer stays to accommodate people who wanted to travel but could work from anywhere, with office buildings still largely empty. Rather than talking directly to consumers first, Airbnb concentrated on its first line of marketing defense: its hosts. In June, Airbnb released a statement of principles in which it promised to protect its stakeholders' safety by publicly listing the number of "guest incidents," such as damage caused to a host's home. And Airbnb promised to make good on making up for hosts' losses. The message: The customer isn't always right. It went a long way toward soothing hosts who lost so much business in the pandemic. Being able to concentrate on stakeholders—in Airbnb's case, the people actually representing the brand to consumers—is crucial to maintaining a valued, relevant identity. “Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s communications to hosts have been incredibly authentic and heartfelt and vulnerable,” says Gabor, who herself is a host with the lodgings platform. “Focusing on that internal audience, including the hosts and employees, allowed them to return a great customer and traveler experience when people were ready to hit the road and take to the air again. What they’ve done is a good example of where a company stripped itself bare of all the extras and went right to the gooey core of where consumers feel something about a brand.” Promising purpose By stressing brand purpose as an integral part of who and what they are in 2021, the world’s leading marketers have planted a flag in the future, and 2022 is the time to make tangible moves toward living up to their promises of purpose. How has brand purpose changed in this polarizing past year, and how will brand purpose strategies evolve in 2022? “I think consumers (especially Gen Z), don't want to waste time on vague commitments and lip service. They operated with a deeper sense of urgency than generations before them. They now expect to see governments, institutions and companies’ action [toward creating] meaningful change, and they aren't shy about calling them out and boycotting/protesting if there is more they could be doing.” —Bryna Corcoran, Director, Brand, Social Media and Influencer Marketing, Lyft But, says Interbrand's Binns, "with the scrutiny of a cynical world of millennials and Gen Z employees and customers, the danger of purpose-washing is rife with risks to brand value." Marketers need to make bold commitments to change crystal clear to their audience. They then have to galvanize brand "superfans" with meaningful actions that they can participate in. Brand purpose can't be conveyed in a 30-second spot or a social media post. Consumers have to be the ones to carry that message. In 2022, Binns says, brands are going to signal acts of leadership. And they need to actively, forcefully demonstrate they are not part of the world's problems, and instead show how they are part of the solution. Check out all of our Outlook 2022 coverage here.

Outlook

The Great Brand Identity Crisis: Coming in 2022

2021 was the year of asserting new purpose and looking for ways to meet the moment—and it all comes to a head in the new year

David Kaplan

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

David Kaplan