Chapter 03Part 1: The phenomenon

What brands do with societies

Brands give orientation, create value and shape culture. As religion, class and family lose their hold, they also offer meaning and community. Whether that is good or bad depends on who shapes them.

A woman seen from behind reaches for a bottle on a fully stocked supermarket shelf. — Choosing between brands on a supermarket shelf.

Orientation in a crowded world

Imagine a supermarket without brands. Hundreds of plain white packs that only say yoghurt. You would have to check, compare and taste every single one, and a weekly shop would take hours.

This is one of the most basic things brands do for a society. They make choice possible where there would otherwise be only noise. Years of experience, reputation and expectation are compressed into a sign that people recognise in a fraction of a second. Anyone who knows a brand does not have to start from scratch every time.

Annette Bruce and Christoph Jeromin, authors of Agile Markenführung, argue that this need grows rather than shrinks. Precisely because so much is changing, brands have to give more orientation, both to customers and inside the company.¹ Oliver Errichiello, a German brand sociologist, even sees orientation as the real purpose of a brand.²

Having to turn down an almost endless number of options does not make people happy. It creates stress, and when there is too much of everything, the brand is what remains.³ Orientation is the quiet service brands provide. It is also the starting point for a much louder one: money.

An economic force

Brands are not only ideas in people's heads. They are also assets on balance sheets. Marco Casanova, writing on public relations as a management tool, lists what a strong brand does for a company. It builds trust with the people who matter most to the business, it helps a company weather crises, because goodwill creates closeness, it makes the company more attractive as an employer, it lets the company keep prices stable, and it has a lasting influence on the company's market value.⁴

Price is perhaps the most visible of these levers. Marty Neumeier, brand strategist, explains why focus pays off: as number one in a small category, a brand can charge a premium, while as number three in a large one, it may have to compete on low prices.⁵ The strength of brands shows even in how retailers copy them, building private labels that now reach well into the premium range. Economic value, however, depends on people. That includes the people who work for a brand.

Brands and work

Brands do not only work on customers. They also work on the people who are employed by a company or would like to be, and in surprisingly similar ways. An employer brand gives orientation to job seekers, signals security and offers prestige. It gives people something to identify with, because qualities of the brand rub off on the people who work for it, and it gives them a shared goal. The pull of a strong brand works on both sides of the counter.

Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, describes the deeper reason behind this attraction. Organisations that inspire give people a feeling of purpose or belonging.⁶ For a long time, the company alone decided what its brand stood for. That has changed.

The public has a say

The power to define a brand has shifted from the company towards society. Customers, critics and fans now discuss brands in public, and what they say shapes how a brand is seen. A brand's meaning is no longer announced, it is negotiated.

Social media give everyone with an internet connection a voice, and people use it. Much of what they say goes unnoticed, some of it is polemical, but the basic shift is real: companies have to share control over their brands with the public.⁷ Reviews and ratings give customers a fairly objective picture of quality, which weakens the brand as a signal of quality.⁸ At the same time, companies can invite users to help shape products, packaging or campaigns.⁹

Todd Irwin, brand strategist, considers word of mouth the strongest marketing tool a company will ever have. When a company puts its customers first, he argues, the customers put the company first.¹⁰ A brand that is partly written by society becomes something shared. For many people today, it has become even more than that.

Key takeaways

01
Brands give orientation in a world with too many choices.
02
They are valuable assets for companies and shape how people see their employers.
03
Customers now share control over what a brand stands for.

Brands as sources of meaning

Brands give us orientation, shape whom we trust and where we feel we belong.

People long for orientation and meaning. They want to know who they are, where they belong and what their lives are for. For most of history, religion, class and family gave them the answers. As these ties lose their hold, brands have moved into the space they leave behind. Errichiello describes this shift in sharp terms. The great systems that once promised a better life have lost much of their pull, and the brand has risen to become a universal system of alliances.

McDonald's opened a restaurant near St Peter's in Rome, and Facebook has more users than the Catholic Church has members.¹¹ Errichiello's thesis is that the collapse of traditional communities did not remove the human need for belonging. Other actors took it over, and one of the most important is the brand.¹² Choosing a brand always means choosing a community as well, which is why brands make people feel less alone.¹³

Richard Shear, author of A History of Brands, ends with a related thought. Faith has always been connected with our idea of spiritual truth. In future, it may increasingly be connected with our worldly idea of the brands we trust.¹⁴ Meaning that is shared by many people becomes culture. And here, too, brands play a part.

Brands, culture and change

It sounds exaggerated at first, but Seth Godin, one of the most widely read marketing authors of our time and author of This Is Marketing, claims that marketing creates culture.¹⁵ Looked at closely, he describes a cycle. Norms create culture, culture drives our decisions, and this leads to even more norms.¹⁶

The status quo does not change because someone is right. It changes because culture changes, and the engine of culture is status.¹⁷ Yet culture today is fragmented. Popular culture is no longer as popular as it once was, so brands shape many small cultures rather than one big one.¹⁸

Donald Miller, who developed the StoryBrand framework, explains why some brands move people beyond the purchase. Following Viktor Frankl, he sees the need for meaning as the strongest of all. Customers want to be invited to be part of something bigger.¹⁹ Brands that give them a voice in a larger story deepen the value of what they sell.²⁰ Influence on this scale raises an obvious question. Is it dangerous?

Are brands evil?

Anyone who describes so much power has to ask whether it does harm. Godin answers with remarkable directness. With enough skill, time and money, he writes, marketing can tell a story that spreads and changes behaviour.

It can make people buy something they would not otherwise have bought, or vote for someone they would not otherwise have considered.²¹ For Godin, it is evil to get children to smoke or to lie to people in ways that have devastating consequences. It is beautiful when it gets people vaccinated or persuades them to wash their hands before surgery.²² His conclusion: as with any effective tool, the effect comes from the craftsman, not from the tool.²³

Simon Sinek takes a different angle. He distinguishes between manipulation and loyalty. Manipulation leads to transactions, not to lasting bonds.²⁴ Manipulation wins a purchase. Inspiration wins a person.

There is no simple yes or no. What the authors share is that none of them denies the power of brands. The question is not whether brands shape societies, but who shapes them, and to what end.

Conclusion

So what do brands do with societies? They give orientation in a world with too many options and make choice possible where there would otherwise be only noise. They are assets on balance sheets, they shape how people see their employers, and today their meaning is increasingly written by their customers. As traditional ties have weakened, brands have also become a source of meaning and community, and they help shape culture.

Brands are therefore neither good nor evil in themselves. Their power can be used to mislead or to help, and the effect depends on the people behind them. What brands do with each of us as individuals is the subject of the next chapter.

Frequently asked questions

Brands help people choose in a world full of options, they create economic value and jobs, and they shape culture, mostly in many small communities rather than one large one. As traditional ties such as religion and class have weakened, brands have also become a source of meaning and belonging for many people. That influence can be used responsibly or abused.

There is no simple answer. Brands can mislead or push people to buy what they would not otherwise have bought. They can also help people make good choices, build trust and support worthwhile causes. Many experts argue that the effect depends less on brands as such than on the people behind them and the kind of relationship they build with their customers.

A strong brand builds trust with customers, employees and investors. It helps a company through crises, makes it more attractive as an employer, lets it keep prices more stable and raises its market value. Because these effects build up over time, a strong brand is a long term asset.

An employer brand is the image a company has among current and potential employees. Like a consumer brand, it helps people orient themselves, signals security and offers prestige. It also gives people something to identify with, because qualities of the brand rub off on the people who work for it. A strong employer brand attracts talent and makes people stay longer.

Books on this topic

Agile Markenführung Annette Bruce, Christoph Jeromin

Philosophie und kleine Geschichte der Marke Oliver Errichiello

The Brand Gap Marty Neumeier

Start with Why Simon Sinek

De-Positioning Todd Irwin

A History of Brands Richard Shear

This Is Marketing Seth Godin

Building a StoryBrand 2.0 Donald Miller

Sources

1. Annette Bruce, Christoph Jeromin: Agile Markenführung. Wie Sie Ihre Marke stark machen für dynamische Märkte. Wiesbaden, Springer Gabler, 2016, p. 86.

2. Oliver Errichiello: Philosophie und kleine Geschichte der Marke. Marken als individuelle und kollektive Sinnstifter. Wiesbaden, Springer Gabler, 2017, p. 64.

3. Ibid., p. 18.

4. Marco Casanova: Public Relations als strategisches Führungsinstrument. In: L. Rademacher (Hrsg.): Distinktion und Deutungsmacht. Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005, p. 4.

5. Marty Neumeier: The Brand Gap. Wie sich die Lücke zwischen Design und Unternehmensstrategie schließen lässt. Pearson, 2022, p. 37.

6. Simon Sinek: Frag immer erst: warum. Wie Top-Firmen und Führungskräfte zum Erfolg inspirieren. München, Redline, 2014, p. 13.

7. Bruce, Jeromin 2016, p. 49.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 51.

10. Todd Irwin: De-Positioning. The Secret Brand Strategy for Creating Competitive Advantage. London, LID Publishing, 2025, p. 43.

11. Errichiello 2017, p. 11.

12. Ibid., p. 12.

13. Ibid., p. 90.

14. Richard Shear: A History of Brands. Origins of Consumer Markets. Beverly, Rockport Publishers, 2025, p. 238.

15. Seth Godin: Das ist Marketing! So wird man wirklich sichtbar. München, Redline, 2019, p. 11.

16. Ibid., p. 126.

17. Ibid., p. 142.

18. Ibid., p. 127.

19. Donald Miller: StoryBrand 2.0. Wie Sie mit starken Geschichten Ihre Kunden überzeugen. München, Vahlen, 2025.

20. Ibid., p. 108.

21. Godin 2019, p. 276.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p. 277.

24. Sinek 2014, p. 33.