#2: The Future Of Brands Is Humanistic Capitalism

Hello, and welcome to The Meaning Expert™ Newsletter devoted to bringing radically new ideas on the business of meaning. This is where I explore the big topics of today and what they mean for the future of business, brands, marketing, innovation, sustainability, leadership, and business management in general.

My ambition with this project is to bring in the missing piece of knowledge so we can create a better future with business – by changing how we think about business, how it generates value and for whom – to add more meaning to people's lives. We have the data, we have the information, we have the insights, we have the research. What we don't have is a holistic understanding: the real sense and meaning of what things truly mean in a larger context of our fast-evolving human existence today.

This newsletter – the same as my work – is devoted to rethinking and reimagining the fundamental building blocks of business from the perspective of meaning and human value. It is only when we zoom out of the details, boxes, verticals, silos, business functions and individual disciplines we have fragmented the whole industry into that we begin to see the tapestry of meaning behind it. Here, on a higher level, we can connect the dots and see the real meaning of things in their actual context. And with their real meaning, we can move forward and do things more effectively.

The second topic for this month is The Future Of Brands Is Humanistic Capitalism. Humanistic Capitalism is a new form of capitalism where the business's sole intention is to elevate our collective human wellbeing – to empower people and their lives through the means of business. This can be done by tapping into our long-neglected humanistic needs to bring our humanity back to life which is something that was highlighted to us by the recent COVID pandemic. In this way, business directly serves the needs of people – to serve our complete humanity – which in turn has a direct positive effect on the planet. If we understand that the climate crisis is first and foremost the overconsumption crisis, then it's easy to connect the dots as to how making us feel more fulfilled and directly serving our fullest life expression and happiness can also serve and transform the environment we all share.

In this issue, I talk about reimagining the future of brands, business and consumption from a humanistic perspective. It is devoted to envisioning a better – and more meaningful and purposeful – future for brands and business and explaining why the future lies in our coming back to our collective essence: our shared humanity. When we unlock our innate humanity, we unlock creativity: the most valuable thing we have in this world to design a new kind of future where business plays a more vital role in our human wellbeing than it has played till today.

Business is the most powerful creative force in the world. Business is not the game of spreadsheets; it is the game of structural creativity. When done at its best – at its peak potential, business is the art of imagineering: imagining new possibilities for how to better serve the world and then engineering these possibilities into reality via products and services to respond to what people need today. It is an alchemical spiritual process. It is stretching the limitations of what is possible – effectively creating a new reality for all of us. Business is an inherently creative discipline. Which is what I love about it the most.

For this reason, business and brands are uniquely positioned to change the world. It won’t be governments, NGOs or capital markets that drive a positive change in the world – it will be commerce. Commerce has the dynamism, ability to instantly respond to new needs and demand and creatively shape them into ready-to-offer solutions. It is a living being that can evolve as fast as we evolve to serve us – but only if we recognize its potential.

Commerce if used right can be the engine for a better world. The task that lies ahead of brands is how to embody the values that help us become more of whom we already are – to increase our individual and collective wellbeing. This edition will show you how to do it.

To dive deeper into this topic, just scroll down. You'll find the materials below.

I wish you a meaningful month!

Dr. Martina Olbert

Founder and CEO, Meaning.Global

This Month's Podcast

Listen to my conversation with Warren Munson, Founder of the UK-based start-up advisory firm Evolve, on Not Consumers But Humans for his podcast Evolve To Succeed. It's devoted to inspiring conversations with business leaders, thinkers and entrepreneurs to share the joys, insights and lessons of the entrepreneur's journey.

Why Humans Not Consumers and what it means for the future of business.

Climate change, social issues, and the pandemic have made everyone question the brands they buy from. Our guest this week, Dr. Martina Olbert of Meaning.Global discusses these changes in depth and advises brands and companies on what they must do to adapt and survive in the new age of consumerism. Martina advises many of the world’s most influential brands and organisations on how to create more meaning and align their businesses with humanity for a better shared future. Martina is known as ‘The Meaning Expert’ and is recognised by Forbes as the “global authority on brand meaning.”

Last year, Martina was asked by the American Journal of Consumer Research to write a piece on the future of consumer collectives. The paper quickly expanded into a provocative piece around the state of consumers, branding, culture, how we got here and how to navigate towards a more meaningful and sustainable future for business, people, society and the planet. Since its publication, the paper has become one of the four most quoted articles in the American Journal of Consumer Research over the past twelve months, and Martina has continued her research for a book that will be published in 2023.

There was so much to talk about with Martina regarding brand value, sustainability, integrity, the changing relationship between consumers and brands, and the future of business—all of which Martina has thought-provoking visions about. It was a fascinating conversation that gave me plenty of new insights and things to think about. I hope it will do the same for you. – Warren Munson

Three Key Takeaways:

• Consumers: There are no consumers; there are only human beings. This means that the consumer collectives as we labelled them have no future. The future of consumers is humanity. We are moving toward a human collective – singular. This means we need to come back to our intrinsic human needs to unlock the true role that brands can play as vehicles to maximize our life expression and empower our choices for a better life.

• Opportunity: The fact that there are no consumers means that most brands have an existential problem today as they fail to engage us as human beings where it matters to us – by creating meaning in our lives. This crisis of relevance poses a big opportunity for brands to rethink what they do, how they engage us, and the business they're in.

• Innovation: The fast-changing consumer paradigm is not a threat. It is an immense opportunity to do things better and transform our worldview to play a more active, purposeful and beneficial role in the world. It is nudging us to explore what new roles brands can play in our lives to add radically new types of value to better serve our shared humanity.

This Month's Thinking

Read my paper on the future of brands, business and consumption Reimagining Consumerism As A Force For Good written for the American Journal of Consumer Research. You can see the original (and shorter) academic paper on JACR website.

Brands represent the value and meaning exchange between people and commerce. More than any other subject in the world – governments, NGOs or capital markets – it is brands that hold the emotional connections with people as they are deeply interlocked into our everyday life fabric. Through their meaning, purpose and utility, they generate trust that in its scale and social impact isn't comparable with any other force in the world. Commerce if harnessed right can be the engine for a more sustainable, equitable, humanistic and prosperous future.

Yet, achieving these new sustainable goals requires a perspective shift. We need to shift the business narrative from people serving brands as consumers to brands serving people as human beings to add meaningful value to their lives that can elevate our collective human wellbeing. To create this meaningful value, brands must respect our complete humanity and serve our needs, instead of their own.

This requires brands to take the focus off of themselves and instead see people as the agents of change in the world – and empower our real-world behaviours by becoming not our friends, but allies to our own authentic needs, values and identities. This is how the brand purpose will finally become real: not just stated but demonstrated through actions. By acting as catalysts of meaningful change in the world, brands can use the immense social power that they hold as a force for good and growth: for people and the planet.

Brands hold a social power that in its scale, potency, daily utility, and emotional charge isn't comparable with any other force in the world. This is why they are best suited to be used as a force for good: as catalysts for global social, cultural, economic and environmental change. If we learn to use this power consciously, we can change the world – through commerce.

If you want to learn more about how this can be done, download the paper below. If you want to learn more about how you can do this, then let's talk.

This Month's Offer

Humanistic Innovation: How Brands Can Tap Into Humanistic Dimensions To Unlock Radically New Value And Increase Our Collective Human Wellbeing.

COVID has radically changed the rules of the game. Not because of the health crisis, but because during the pandemic we reconnected with something deeper within us that was long dormant. It was our true nature: our humanity. This is why the underlying dynamic of consumerism is now shifting from brands to people, from owning to being, and from consumption to self-expression. What this means for brands is that old tricks no longer work. People don't care anymore. They care less about brands because they now care about themselves – finally.

This poses a unique situation as well as an opportunity for brands to tap into new ways to be of use to our collective human wellbeing. If brands want people to care about them, perhaps they should now care about us instead of trying harder to figure out how to make us care about them. It won't work. The jig is up. So what does this mean for the future of brands? Does this mean consumption is over? No, we now simply aspire to different things. This shift was already taking place before the pandemic but it has accelerated our transition to the new humanistic paradigm. It turned our attention from seeking fulfilment outside through consumption inward.

Every crisis is the door to innovation and transformation – to do things better and more consciously this time, to create a new type of value that the world actually needs and craves today. Social, cultural, community, existential, transformative, spiritual... The new brief is to create a higher level of engagement with the world and with ourselves which brands can facilitate by helping us meet both our essential and higher human needs. To empower us to live the lives that we want to live, not the lives that emulate brand values through living in an endless state of consumption. We now need a new type of deeply human value that adds meaning to our lives and fundamentally improves the level of our human wellbeing. If we understand that all our customers are human beings, does this not mean that the value we can offer to them to make their lives better is unlimited? And is this not exciting?

This opens our vision to the world of possibility. The changing market landscape is not a threat but rather an invitation to do things differently. Brands can respond to this invitation by envisioning, imagining, creating, and offering new types of products and services that are rooted in our human needs and directly add new humanistic value to our lives instead of taking it away. Brands need to meet the newly self-aware people's needs that we've been neglecting for so long via mindless consumption and brand aspiration. This doesn't mean the end of brands; it means precisely the opposite. This opens up the door to a brand new opportunity for brands and the role they can and should play in our lives to be the co-architects of a new and better shared future. For real this time.

I'm looking forward to discussing the opportunity to imagine something new and exciting with like-minded clients. Contact me to have a conversation.

What does this mean for your brand? How can you apply this in your business? What new humanistic dimensions can you unlock to maximize value for people by reimagining your current offering and creating new streams of revenue? Is this a conversation worth having? Then click below and let's explore.

This Month's Talk

Shaping A Better World With Brands: How brands can build a new and better future for people, business, and the world.

How can we use brands as a force for good to become the catalysts of social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental change in the world? How can we unlock the true power of brands and business to accelerate the transition to a better shared future? This is the topic of my talk "Shaping A Better World With Brands" based on my latest study Reimagining Consumerism As A Force For Good.

In this talk, I explore the changing dynamic between brands and people in the post-COVID world and what this can mean for our collective future. Most recently, I spoke about this theme at EXPO Dubai in a talk with Ogilvy Consulting "How Can Brands Accelerate Our Transition To A Sustainable Future" and at King's College London.

To book me as a speaker for your future event, contact me or my agent Toby at Chartwell Speakers. For a complete list of speaking topics, see my website.

This Month's Quotes

"Brands are uniquely positioned to change the world. It won't be governments, NGOs or capital markets, it will be brands because they are deeply interlocked in our everyday life fabric. Commerce if used right can be the engine for a better world." (Share this quote)

“We need a new business narrative rooted in our humanity. It needs to shift from people serving brands as consumers to brands serving people to add meaningful value to their lives that elevates human wellbeing.“ (Share this quote)

“Brands hold a social power that in its scale, potency, daily utility, and emotional charge isn't comparable with any other force in the world. If we learn to harness this power consciously, we can change the world.“ (Share this quote)

"Meaning is what people emotionally connect with in their own lives through their beliefs, needs, values, identities and authentic sense of self. The true value of any brand is in what it represents to people – what it means to them." (Share this quote)

"Meaning is the most important currency of the 21st century. Meaning is the new money. If you have meaning, your business growth is inevitable." (Share this quote)

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About

Dr. Martina Olbert is recognized by Forbes as the global authority on meaning, known simply as The Meaning Expert™. She is a visionary business thinker, imagineer, humanist, futurist, strategist, social scientist and speaker represented by Chartwell Speakers in London. Martina is the Founder & CEO of Meaning.Global where she helps brands and organizations find, unearth, understand and reimagine their meaning in the fast-changing world today that is aligning more and more with our own humanity. Her research includes brands, culture and society, consumerism and consumer behaviour, luxury and brand equity, meaning and valuation, and the evolution of values towards a new form of humanistic capitalism. She is a member of The Good Future Project shaping a better future for people and the planet. She is also the author of Reimagining Consumerism As A Force For Good (2021) and the globally acclaimed The Luxury Report (2019). Thinkers360 named her the Global Thinker on Sustainability, Marketing, and Ecosystems To Follow In 2022 and 2023.

Meaning.Global is a trusted advisor to many of the world's most influential brands and organizations as the global expert on meaning. We advise leaders on strategy, marketing, innovation, societal shifts, cultural trends, value creation and growth to create more meaning and align business with humanity for a better shared future.

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