Time to forget everything we learned in the past about branding? The future is the future of branding

Abstract

Time and size are no longer fundamental to brand leverage, nor is a brand’s reputation and past performance. Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly as a result of the technological and economic progress of recent years, which significantly changes the playing field for brands. With the exploding number of options that is now available, consumers focus less on the past and more on the sum of their expectations about future encounters with the brand. To assess a brand’s future, potential consumers take less interest in the brand’s existing products and focus more on the non–product-related actions of the brand. Also, with the rapidly growing use of crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, consumers can, and expect to be, increasingly engaged with brands before they are even established. Branding thus becomes less a matter of selling and more a matter of inviting, less a matter of history and more a matter of the future.