Futures of Branding

Fascinating podcast series focusing on Anthropology in Business & Design hosted by Matt Artz.

Tom Maschio -featured in this episode- is a former academic anthropologist now with his own biz consulting firm…speaks about his work with brands like Chevrolet and Foot Locker centering around the enhancement of meaning through humanistic and semiotic analysis aka consumer Ethnography and much more.

Nice comprehensive resource for Brand Terminology…

explains specialist terms of daily brand work in simple terms, the key terms revolving around brand, branding and core topics of brand strategy consulting.

The BrandTrust Brand Glossary continuously evolves as a growing pool of knowledge with a clear brand focus that offers easy definitions of the most important terms of brand management.

"Old and young must unite to form Generation S -a force to combat corporate gigantism and to shape cultural and social revolutions."

Dr Glenn Albrecht is freelance environmental philosopher and farmosopher. He has pioneered the domain of Psychoterratic –earth relationships with his concept of Solastalgia and is the author of Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World and writes at Psychoterratica

In the essay, After the Anthropocene, he made the case for a new epoch in human history: the Symbiocene, a meme representing the very opposite of the current Anthropocene period of human dominance. This new meme is created to achieve nothing less than complete change of the biophysical and emotional foundations of society from the Ecocidal to the Symbiotic, from the destructive to the nurturing. While the Anthropocene is generating despair and desolation, the Symbiocene gives generously of hope and optimism.

As Futurists and Brand Enthusiasts we value many things including:
1] the importance of myriad perspectives and utilizing many 'ways of knowing'

2] the capacity of mental models to impact us physically and the power of storytelling to shape them

This article takes us through indigenous and ancient mythologies…the ways these people viewed their relationship with the natural world…rich w/ meaning…and not just as a supply resource for manufacturing products to sell.

This is a nice blog by Dr. Andy Hines, Associate Professor & Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight. In it, Andy brings together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist.

This entry has a great graphic by Houston Foresight soon-to-be-alum Denise Worrell.
Check it out….

We ask thousands of fact questions to the public in many countries…to see what people think the world looks like based on the news stories they see. We check the data…from the UN and other reliable sources…to identify the most common misconceptions where peoples' ideas differ most from reality. We can help YOU identify what you’re wrong about, and…keep upgrading your worldview as the world keeps changing,

Corporate Social Responsibility comes in many forms and even the smallest company can impact social change by making a simple donation to a local food bank. Here's some more CSR examples:

Reducing carbon footprints

Improving labor policies

Participating in fairtrade

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Charitable global giving

Community and virtual volunteering

Corporate policies that benefit the environment

Socially and environmentally conscious investments

Designed as an enhancement of wind tunneling approaches, IWT allows an organization to understand, test, and manage multiple organizational identities. Furthermore, IWT facilitates the alignment of organizational identities across a range of possible futures created during a scenario planning process with the ultimate goal of finding a strategic identity.

The method is also presented with a series of open-source templates created on the whiteboard collaborative platform Miro.

Clarks Originals, the British shoe brand, has collaborated with Black owned non-gendered apparel and accessories brand, FANGIRL, to launch a new platform #InHerShoes to mark Women’s History Month and their diverse stories. The content series, rolling out across Clarks Originals’ social channels from today, spotlights Black British female creatives who walk viewers through their journeys and give insight to what it’s like to be a Black woman in today’s society, while styled in a bespoke, limited edition run of Clarks Originals x FANGIRL Wallabees and T-shirts.

ESG pressures on companies are intense and require huge investment. Naturally, as consumer scrutiny grows, businesses are worried about being seen on the wrong side of history – laggards that were forced to improve their act. Surely it's better to embrace brand purpose, through constructive criticism and find ways to improve its consumer effectiveness, than it is to sit still?

CareersCraft is a virtual world, hosted on Minecraft, designed to help students identify their professional strengths. Users roam around various landmarks in Wales, completing challenges and activities along the way. At the end, they’re presented with career paths which match their soft skills.

How else might brands utilize the Metaverse for Good? This articles cites a few examples.

"If material, economic growth is merely an illusion within a closed-loop system, what does it mean to re-orient towards the growth of intimacy, complexity, and diversity? What are the common threads at the heart of Indigenous thinking across cultures?"

How might Brands learn from Indigenous Knowledge Based Systems? How might we all benefit from such a cross-pollination?

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Moral Imaginations is a growing community and approach to rigorous imagining for moral futures.

"In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility." 

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Nature Needs a New Pronoun

The core of the work of Moral Imaginations is about coming together to develop the embodied practice, deepened empathy and playful creativity to foster a human sensibility of who we are and what we are here to do. The work centres on ‘three pillars’ — which serve as portals to accessing our moral imaginations. These are:

The perspective of future, unborn generations

The perspective of the more-than-human world

The perspective of deep, evolutionary time, and ancestors

Sparks & Honey is a cultural intelligence consultancy helping organizations understand explosive and immediate cultural shifts, as well as cultural tastes that develop over time. We leverage Q™, our AI-powered intelligence platform that quantifies and predicts culture, to ignite transformation for brands and their consumers.

The following case study showcases the value that foresight drives in strategy for a North American Fortune 500 Retail Chain launching its first effort to integrate Talent Management Strategies across the enterprise.

Some think Branding has a Branding problem….here's a little 'out there' inspiration for breaking bounds :]

Imagination of Things claims to be: Story-first, medium agnostic, and playful. We are storytellers, inventors, and magicians. And of course they collaborate with brands.

An inspiring Manifesto for us to be inspired by? …might we create something similar nascent to Brands/Branding's capacity to shape more Positive Results in 2050?

An anthology of 2050 positive, post- pandemic futures by the global network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners: We invite you to step out of 2D models and frameworks, and absorb these richer representations of change. Let yourself be inspired by these positive change stories and let your creativity unfold to start working toward a better tomorrow today.

"Over the past few decades, neuroscientists, psychologists, and behavioral economists have made great strides in increasing our understanding of the unconscious mind, how our decision-making works, and how consumers really build loyalty to brands.

Much of this new understanding goes against much of what most people –and marketers– assumed. As this understanding gains more traction, and as we learn more, marketers will be much better equipped to build brands that truly resonant with the consumer mind.” -Daryl Weber, brand consultant & author of Brand Seduction

Wish he had said the citizen, creative or compassionate human mind….anyway thought provoking entries.

Published Dec 2020. What do you think? **
Global branding company Siegel+Gale predicted 'doing well by doing good' will be one of the key factors distinguishing great brands and organizations in 2021.**

-Focus on sustainability to unlock value creation
-Mirror, mirror: What happens inside gets done externall
-Established brands lean into their legacy to overtake disrupters
-Swapping dynamism for family values
-Spike in virtual worldbuilding
-Return to shared sensemaking
-Return of the Roaring ’20s
-Simplicity and data-driven decisions will be essentials in 2021
-Not everything needs to say 'connected'

We at Futures Space are eager to explore this exciting topic, through the context of Futures Thinking, and would love to hear your impressions of and experience with brands, or the notion of branding. Given the scope and breadth of our international community, the results should prove pretty insightful.

We are grateful for your time & please include your name towards the end if you would like to contribute to the concepting, implementing or facilitating of this co-creative space.

Thank you!