Hasta La Creative!

Brands are products of their media. Jingles and slogans were all the rage at the time of radio. Print prioritized photography and logos. TV launched the 30-second spot. Mass media separated brand identity from its execution, which in a time of templated channels and messages, didn’t matter so much. A company could give its brand identity guideline to someone in advertising, and expect that the typeface, logo, format or image was going to be applied correctly.

But modern brands don’t hand off the attributes of their brand identity to media. Instead, they build their identity in their networks, one experience at the time. They are identity networks. Modern brands are less about the company that created products and services, and more about the individual who buys them.

A network does for 21st-century brand communication what the TV did for the 20th, and print did for the 19th: it conveys brand identity in a tangible form. It shows us the organizing mode of communication. In the 19th century, it was the identity of a family business; in the 20th, it was the corporate identity. Now it is the identity of the consumer.

Continue reading at AdAge.com