Brands: Asserting Identity yet Pursuing Anonymity
I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.”
― Suzy Kassem
Two weeks ago, I met with a distinguished Fortune 500 brand whose CSO and brand heads showed deep reticence toward what information our collaboration would register in perpetuity on the blockchain that our SaaS app is being built on. The week before, another leading fashion label in sustainability asked me, “Would only platform members have access to comment and pass judgment on our product and brand performance? Or is it open to the public? What if we get trolled? How can we contain or minimize exposure to negative comments?” Another meeting I took a week ago with a media consortium ended on this question, “What will you do to protect our brand image when something fails to go according to plan, because believe me in the impact space, things seldom go according to plan for us. Is that moment of falling short captured on blockchain? Can we redeem ourselves back into a positive light after we fall short? Can we erase the low points and failures?”
I wasn't surprised by their apprehension and caution, but are these the right questions for brands to raise at this juncture? It made me, an inherently trusting individual, ponder what else they were hiding from public scrutiny? Are brands merely cultural icebergs, hiding the bulk of their nefarious activity beneath the PR waterline, seemingly innocuous, until it becomes evident how many costs were consciously passed on to ecology and society! Is greenwashing and purpose washing notching open the bows of the blue marble and the biodiversity it harbors, against the extractive shards of commerce, until life collapses under the pressure of cumulative negligence, resource depletion and data misrepresentations? Are brands ignorantly pushing people and planet to play the Titanic in their story arc of "nothing to see here, back to business as usual?"
In pitching my product and getting early clients comfortable with our go to market strategy, I have repeatedly encountered brands expressing insecurity, fear, and ambivalence toward blockchain, as it asks for unequivocal “transparency” and “accountability.” Many reputed brands are afraid of being completely vulnerable and deliberately putting themselves out there, because they are terrified of negative feedback. Controlling every moment of engagement is exhausting both psychologically and financially, but most significantly it results in lying by omission. Like a cheating partner, riddled with red flags, brands that do not want to shoulder the consequences of their words and actions end up breaching trust and eroding self-integrity. A brand that wants to take all the credit and none of the blame is incapable of self integration and self actualization. Such a brand is stilted in its emotional maturity and thus incapable of showing up intelligently for its own expression, let alone for planet and people. These are the brands hoping to fly under the radar or remain anonymous when things get hairy, and have to work doubly hard to save face by asserting meticulously managed profiles.
Consumer attitudes have shifted significantly, with Millennials and Gen-Z insisting on greater visibility and insight into brand purpose and values.
88 percent of consumers say that authenticity is a core attribute that makes or breaks their decision to support or boycott a brand. (Stackla, 2021). Two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world around the world stated they would purchase from a brand or boycott it solely because of its position on a social or political issue (Edelman, 2019).
66 percent of consumers think transparency is one of the most attractive qualities emulated by a brand (Accenture Strategy, 2018). 46 percent of consumers in the United States claim they would pay premium value to purchase from brands they can unwaveringly trust. (Salsify, 2022).
At a time when consumer attitudes have shifted dramatically toward complete authenticity, which cannot occur without transparency, accountability and integrity, brands seem to be most predisposed to filtering, curating and insulating their exposure, image and interactions. This paints brands as disingenuous, because exercising such a level of vigilance, prudence and control over their relationships is received as manipulative comport by consumers. It evokes what it emits, vigilance, prudence and control from consumers, and neither lean into the interaction. In opting to lie by omission, brands have begun to behave like pathological narcissists, afraid of confronting their wounds from formative years.
We have allowed corporations, and the brands they have burgeoned, to assume identity, amass greater rights for their autonomy and agency, and endure fewer restrictions on their freedom of expression than human beings. It is no wonder that most people today prefer being a “brand,” to being human, because the former is a commodity that the capital markets can appraise a tangible value for, while the latter is merely consciousness, which cannot be remunerated without first transforming into a “brand,” perhaps as a spiritual guru who replaces life coaches.
Identity is a changing construct of perception generated from several vantage points: 1. self-discovery 2. first-person disclosure 3. External observation 4. collaborative insights 5. unsolicited advice and 6. requested feedback. Identity also contains a mutual blind-spot, aspects unknown to both the individual or brand in question and those around, aspects that are only discovered through life experiences. It is obvious, identity cannot be coined in isolation, solely by the individual or entity in search of their framing, rather through inclusive dialogue, authentic self expression, vulnerable admissions, honest interactions and spontaneous exchanges with life’s unexpected curveballs. The labels and adjectives assigned to a brand, person and/or product only become generally accepted reality when there is collective consensus. When there is a lack of collective consensus, trust in such a conflicted or confusing expression of identity wanes, and the identity's social equity is instantly vaporized. Yet most brands, and people, are afraid to expose their authentic self and live in integrity with their true nature. Few strive to be vulnerable and by extension real, in fact most assert self-limiting definitions as walls they can hide behind, and moats they can keep others at a distance with.
How many labels embraced under the auspices of identity by a brand are accounted for in its integrity?
In today’s consumer economy, the words brand, person and product are frequently used interchangeably. This is both a good and bad thing. It’s a good thing, because a through-line of continuity evidences prolific integrity. It's a bad thing, because the fraction of self that is monetizable pigeonholes an entity’s dimensional presence into a sliver of personhood. The reductive notion of “riches in the niches” keeps brands, people and products playing a role instead of being whole. Limiting competence, autonomy and relatedness does not empower self-determination, rather, it disempowers individuals and organizations from evidencing true agency and stakeholdership.
Brand, person, or product, identity sets one apart from many, through both visible elements (outer packaging) and divulged substance (inner contents). So how can brands, products and people not suffer from an identity crisis? They would need to reframe identity (the parts) as the subset of their integrity (the whole). Brands need to explore the "why" that got them started? Recently spoke to Jameson, and the distillery paid its workers in 1916, even when the rebels took over their Bow street facility, and by law they didn't have to compensate. To date, the company still honors employee wages no matter the externalities, and prides itself in offering its staff job security.
Integrity is forged at conception, this is true of both human beings and brands. People lose sight of their true self just like brands do, forgetting their intrinsic integrity at inception. Where people are concerned, we come into being as consciousness, we are pristine, immaculate canvases of infinite possibilities at birth, but as we age, we get caught up in various transient identities in the hopes that playing those parts will help us uncover our whole. We get disappointed when it does not. And how could embodying a fraction, and aspiring to be its contradiction, ever reconcile and leave any of us feeling whole? That is what being out of integrity looks like. More often than not, incomplete founders, give rise to inconsistent brands. A brand can only meet itself as deeply as its founder has met his/her or their self.
When an identity has awareness of self, and receives checks and balances from its total integrity, identity gains the space it needs to iterate, shed, and responsively revise itself. An identity should always be given the chance to consciously and courageously evolve past the familiar it has a predisposition to ignorantly stagnate in. Playing it safe and small by sticking to the known shore can only perpetuate comfort zones. However, leaning into the unknown and learning from the challenges it presents can cultivate uncontested uniqueness. Just like snakes outgrow their old lengths and molt their skins, to embrace their current imprint of being, brands, people and products need to learn to let go of their limiting definitions of self, and accept their current expression, spots and all. Such transformative flexibility keeps an identity honest, real, relevant and alert.
When people or brands value their identity from a space of integrity, they perceive responsibility as a privilege and the duty to act as an extension of their conviction. Alignment with self awareness always embodies proactive accountability. The converse is equally true, those without self-integrity perceive responsibility as a burden, and the duty to act as a chore. There is no alignment with self-determining intrinsic values, thus they pursue such alignment with extrinsic variables and external validations. Not being internally motivated means one is more likely to make excuses in moments when one should demonstrate ownership. Such companies pass the buck they ought to pay forward, championing economy at the cost of ecology.
*Poster I created for the film Seeding Change, featuring socially responsible brands like Numi Tea, Sambazon, Dr Bronner’s, Outerknown etc. Here’s a link to the film: https://www.seedingchangefilm.com/
From my 12 years of consultancy work with brands, nonprofits, individuals and government agencies, I have distilled the following:
A brand or individual can either show up as a preoccupied vassal of identity or an unoccupied vessel of integrity. The former is degenerately unavailable to the whole, as its self-selected role is to allocate resources toward serving its own take, stake and rake through unconscious commerce. The latter is regeneratively available to the co-created whole it embodies and thus distributes its resources throughout its network, ensuring collective wellbeing and sustainable wealth through conscious commerce.
A brand or person that shows up only when it’s convenient, or in line with a self-serving agenda, is conditional in their availability and cannot expect a values-aligned and purpose-oriented customer to stand by them unconditionally.
A brand can be as intangible as the feeling it evokes when people relate to it or consume its products and services. A brand can be the culture emulated by its employees or the philosophy expressed in its communications. Since brands create from resources procured from nature and rely on people to produce, stock, deliver and retail their merchandise or services, they need to be both environmentally and socially conscientious. Time to go beyond identity and look to integrity. Time to truly humanize your brand so it can be emotive, empathic, engaged and capable of evidencing stewardship. Brands need to think about the value provided, not just to their customers, vendors, producers, but also to every life and system it comes in contact with. Some brands understand and execute on this holistic ethos better than others. At the end of the day, no one, least of all consumers, appreciates insincere attempts from brands to evidencing purpose, values and care. Brands or individuals who fail to show up with integrity and get swept up in identity either lose public goodwill and standing or fail to gather critical mass from the outset.
In the digital age, where bad press, negative reviews, tweet call-outs and honest opinions are abundant and omnipresent, all it takes is a trigger and a click of a button to erode all brand equity. The time to evade accountability, transparency and integrity ended the moment public perception went online and began to weaponise self-organising access to initiate mass boycotts. What took years now takes hours, days or worse minutes. A trending hashtag is all it takes. So is it worth the risk to be less than whole? Being "in it to win it" is not a motto that sits well, with an era deferring to stakeholder capitalism. So why perpetuate high risk behavior that the current and next generations place on thin ice, when all it takes is to truthfully walk your talk and stand for more than short-sighted self interest?
Fortunately, I have found two pilot partner brands who understand the evolving consumer landscape, and that purchase decisions, as well as cancel-culture inclinations, are influenced by values, impact footprints, veracity and purpose, not price tags, bargain bribes, membership economies and legacy loyalty. The brands we are launching with readily share our vision and mission and already exemplify a genuine willingness to operate with transparency, accountability and integrity. Once the partnerships are announced, I will continue to share our collaborative journey to catalyse greater good here.
