When Culture Rewrites Your Brand

What happens when the world rewrites your brand without asking? This episode I'm cracking open how semiotics (those everyday signs, symbols, and cues) shape what people think you mean, not what you intended. See how cultural context silently redefines your message and why ignoring that shift can cost you.

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Transcript

Opening And Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You're listening to Brandon Butler, straight talking, occasionally in your face, no BS, branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. For those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and health caring association, consumer behaviour and design thinking can impact what people say, think and feel. I'm your host, our line, is sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable, and often unapologetically blunt. Founder and creative director of brand and design agency, your one and only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week. I have a pretty deep discussion that I want to discuss today. And it's speaking to meaning shifts and how they change without your permission, essentially, and how that costs brands. Or people, so to say, which are personal brands anyway, whether you like it or not. But I have a question, and I want to open it with this because it's important. If I showed you a red hat right now, what would you think? Because that instinct is automatic meaning making. So it's happening to you and your brain with how you perceive things every single day. And it's how consumers see your brand every single day. And not just a brand, an institution, an organization, anything essentially that has some kind of reputation. Put simply, this isn't about politics, but it is about something way more fundamental to how branding actually works. And now, branding doesn't mean anything. I've had this conversation with someone online before where they believe that marketing is more important than brand, but they don't realize that brand and marketing coexist. You can have an existing brand and not need marketing. And by that I mean if you're not selling anything. For instance, past brands still retain memory, which means therefore the brand is still actionable in someone's mind. It's the memory. So while you need marketing alongside brand to make sure that it can sell or it is performing and for visibility, that doesn't mean that brand doesn't work without marketing. I had this conversation anyway. So put simply, the heart hasn't changed, but the meaning for it has. And this is the episode today. I want to talk about that. Because nobody is talking about this in brand strategy, and it's actually wrecking businesses who aren't paying attention. And it has notoriously in the past. This isn't something new. So let's talk about how meaning is decoded. What I want to talk about is semiotics, which so many people don't know about. But it is basically the study of how meaning is made. It's the universal language of symbols and signs. So not what you say, but what people decode when they see it. I remember learning this in comms, and it was like a whole thing with you have a messenger and a receiver and how the message is like a sender and a receiver and how the message is interpreted. And it's really important to understand as the messenger, the person sending the message, that you understand how that could be misinterpreted. Unfortunately, you don't get to control that. So it's not just what you say, but how people interpret that. So your audience is already reading you through the lens of everything that they've already seen that day. The news, the discourse, the cultural mood, and not even just that day. Preconceived narratives that have already been constructed in their mind, otherwise known as biases, too. And this is something that I'm deeply passionate about, and I'm trying to have at a conversation that can break down complexity in a simplistic way. But this is where we're at, and this is why so many people are arguing because the conversation level is like level 15. So they're not coming to you or your content fresh. They're coming to you preloaded with what they've already experienced for that day. Or it doesn't need to mean any kind of content. It could be an experience that they've had. For instance, if they've had a bad day, they're going to take things negatively. That's why there's a whole psychology around when you should have your meetings, not having them at 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon if you want people to retain any kind of information. That's the whole thing. How people interpret the messaging. So the question isn't just what we're saying, it's what people are actually hearing in this moment right now. And those are two very different questions. And most brands are only asking the first one. This is where the problem lies. So recently, and I don't know if you know the brand I have bought from them previously. I didn't see any issue with it, but they are called Frida Baby. There is a whole uproar at the moment because they use very innuendo-styled narrat like wording and messaging for their brand. It's millennial-coded, it's humor, worked brilliantly, and then the cultural mood has shifted. Now, since there's been a release of the Epstein files, obviously people have been primed with information about, you know, bad things, people doing bad things. And realistically, that's how people are looking at the world right now, geopolitically, you know, conversationally, socially, like how we are understanding our context of our reality. And so when you've created a brand that has been built without that, obviously you're coming from a past time. But when you revisit the messaging in current times, it can really have an issue. So we're looking at conversations around child safety, parental mental load, trust in baby products and brands. And all of it changed the emotional filter when people were reading them through their messaging. So it's the same brand and the same voice and the same jokes, but unfortunately a completely different landing based on the cultural context that we're in right now. So to give you an idea, they've got things called like the quickie and you know, things like that that play on things. They're like, why are we using, or something like now there's three of you, like talking about threesomes, but like the baby's there, like it's a it's a play on words, but when you're reading it with a different lens, it can come across quite grotesque for some people. Unfortunately, they've been caught in the firing line. And this is where we look at risk mitigation, which a lot of people don't understand or never think that will happen to them. Um, there's a lot of other things that they do, like jokes, like milk on the forehead that obviously looks like you know exactly what you think, and they're having jokes about it, whereas before no one would have thought anything of it, and they didn't, hence why they've been around for 10 years. No one thought anything of it. I used their snot sucker things for my kids when they were little. But now we're looking at it with a completely different lens and a totally different landscape, and it's not hitting the same way. And this is what we need to understand about fast shifting narratives and understanding the cultural meaning behind words and how words can change meaning or how things can change meaning very, very quickly, and what we need to do as brands to counteract that. So that's not bad luck. That's actually what happens when the meaning of your semiotic codes shift, which is basically the meaning of what you're putting out, and your brand doesn't notice until it's already in the firing line. Now, obviously, you can't see some of the cultural context, but this is why cultural intelligence and understanding the cultural landscape is really important to how we understand narrative development for brands. When we are communicating so frequently across multiple channels and we're present 24-7, it's important that we are being very aware of what's happening in our space. You know, how people are perceived, how people are understanding visibility, how they're feeling seen in your content, whether they're not feeling seen in your content, if they're not feeling seen on your content in your content, why they're not feeling seen, all of these things need to be addressed. The brand didn't change, the meaning did, and they did not see it coming because nobody was watching for it. Now, obviously, like I said, it's some things just happen, but we did this has not been new. We've watched this happen progressively over the last few months. Unfortunately, when you've got product names driven in this, it could be a longer change. But the issue is needing to address it. You need to speak about it because not saying anything is is saying something, it's signaling something, which I mentioned last week. So brands who ignore it entirely, it's almost like they're being too stubborn to admit change. And this is where I see a lot of people will fall down. So many people are in this predicament right now, and you can't tell them. You can only advise and they can only choose to listen. And if they don't choose to listen, then too bad, so sad. So Kodak invented the digital camera, and they still collapsed. And realistically, it's because they couldn't update what they meant in a world that moved on from film. They literally invented the digital camera. Like this the technology that they invented outperformed their old technology, but they did not think anything was going to happen to film. Therefore, they stagnated and went out because they didn't focus on it. And people took the technology and went with it. Then we look at Blockbuster. So they understood video rental more than anyone. And we consider Blockbuster nostalgic. Well, for a millennial anyway, it and anyone else prior. It has cemented certain parts of our life. Except that's not the life that we live in now. It's not the world that we live in now. It is a memory. And you can't bring memories to life right now because that technology does not thrive in this environment that we're in. The idea is great, but the adoption of the people wanting to buy it is not there. Therefore, the brand would not succeed unless it adapted and it did not. So convenience at the stage there got completely recoded by culture. So going down and getting a video from the video shop, I haven't said that in a while, changed because now everything is expected instantaneously. And going to a store stopped feeling easy. It's not easy at all. And it felt like an effort. Then we look at Toys R Us. Now they knew Toys. But childhood magic, as I guess you would see it, you know, running around those big stores, store aisles, and you know, it's still a feeling. I still remember it. But when physical retail gets replaced by a generation who grew up with a search bar instead of a warehouse, that's what you can come to expect. And then we can also add in, you know, Tupperware. Great product, but horrible distribution. It they didn't have online purchasing for so long. They did things through like a pyramid scheme party, L MLM. No hate. But that's how they that's how they grew. It was like word-of-mouth marketing. But with that change was cultural context into targeting women's group for kitchenware. Now, tell me how that's working now. I mean, still women like kitchenware, but using that is really outdated language because women aren't home housewives anymore as frequently as they were back then. The world and cultural conversation has changed, and if your brand doesn't adapt, it will sink. Again, Tupperware, great product, fell out. So they failed because the meaning of what they offered stopped matching what culture needed from them. All of them, all four of them. And nobody inside those businesses were asking what does our brand actually signal right now to this specific person being their target market. This is the problem. So many people say, we know our brand, we know you used to. Like I'd be frequently updating that list because the cultural context is changing so rapidly, and we're watching algorithms just funnel in different thoughts for people that these are these are quick moving, moving things, quick moving narratives. What I like to say is that stubbornness dressed up as conviction is still stubbornness. So when it stops landing and the response from people are it's too sensitive, or people are too sensitive and you can't say anything anymore, or you know, you know, just all of the things like that. That's not clarity at all, not even a little bit. That's your ego protecting itself from having to update because it's too hard. You know, what worked for you before did work, and now having to move into something different feels threatening. So you revert to what's safe. It's what our brains do. But unfortunately, something may have worked really well for you, may not be working now. But the problem is locking in on it and not looking at it's a suncosse fallacy, by the way. That's a whole fallacy. It's like hanging on to something that you should let go. Very different to holding on to something and persevering. It's there's different meaning to that. I'm all about persevering, but persevering on the right thing. So saying nothing is also a signal, as I mentioned before. So you need to understand that silence gets decoded into a message. So brands that are going quiet on everything right now, which I spoke in depth to an episode or two ago, and waiting for things to settle, they're being decoded as indifferent. People are looking at them as not having a voice or riding across the bandwagon or standing on the fence, fence sitting, and that is not what's happening. That's not what people want right now. So, in a volatile climate or a climate where people are actively choosing value-aligned brands, being indifferent or being indifferent is a choice. It's just not a good one. This isn't about um needing to be really loud or performative, by the way. You don't need to show an activist flag, but there are value-led actions. So it's about understanding that every choice that your brand makes, including the choice to say nothing, is being read by everyone around you. So this is where you need to understand the type of audience that you're dealing with. If you're dealing with an audience that are wanting change and they're in a movement, for instance, women's health, and you're not talking to women's health, that's a problem. You know, if you're talking about um someone that's needing to update their brand and you keep referring back to something like an online course from 2020, then that's not updating. That's trying to sell something that worked and not navigating the new way of doing things. It is really about innovation. And this is not what people are doing. They're sticking to what they've always known. And we're watching those that aren't learning or wanting to learn more are going to stagnate. And this is just the first step. They won't see it until it's too late. So indifference is a choice, and it's not a good one. So, what do you do with this information? Because it can feel really overwhelming. And that is that your brand language is a living thing. I keep saying brand is fluid now. It's not a fixed thing, it's fluid. So it needs to be evolving with the cultural alignment. When technology is moving so quickly, and therefore a culture will move with how quick technology moves, we need to understand that the narratives that we're using are going to be constantly put under a microscope. So it's adapting and changing and moving and updating as the world is moving. And something that you may have said 10 years ago can be completely taken out of context now because we're in a very different time. And by you locking in and saying, Oh, people are too sensitive, it shows your inability to grasp change. And that just shows stagnation as well. So, what I would say to those people is it's time to actually look in. That's also called cognitive dissonance, and it's your inability to adapt to the new information that you're being fed. Not saying that you're doing that and just using it as, you know. So what we need to look at is the tone of voice guideline. And this is what I always say to people about why brand and visual, uh, brand voice and visuals go hand in hand. They literally work together. They are a combination. You can't just have copy and you can't just have visuals. They need to work together. They are a moving asset. When you're talking about semiotics, you could have an image of something and wording underneath it, and the wording can change and can completely change the whole perception of the image. The same thing goes for an image. You can have wording, change the image in the background, and it can completely change the context of the wording. And this is why both of them work hand in hand. The whole old debate between designer versus copywriter is absolute bullshit. Anyone that tells you that it's a thing is living in the past. We need to be understanding communication is joint, and there's also different ways to interpret communication. And not only that, it's how we process information. There are different ways to process information by feel, by visuals, by auditory, by verbal. There are a lot of different things. We are visual processes, if you're not visually impaired, obviously, first and foremost, at like 60%. Then it's what you say and then it's how it's said. So all of these things matter, which is why visuals are really important. Video, sorry, is really important at the moment because you can hear, you can um see, and you can watch movement, and like there are so many different sensory experiences happening in one go. And it's it's important to understand that. So coming back to your voice guidelines. So your voice guidelines and your messaging pillars, your we've always done it this way vibe. Um, they're not fixed. So you have to understand that that might have worked for you a couple of years ago, but it won't work for you now. And there's starting points that need regular pressure testing against the environment that we're currently living in. Because culture's moving, it always moves, culture is always moving, but culture will move as fast as we are able to consume new information. And with technology moving, that's why it's fast. I love cultural stuff. This is why I really just vibe it. But you need to understand what people are living in right now and how we're observing it. I had this conversation the other day about how people think that Gen Z and the younger generations have no attention. The issue isn't that they don't have attention, it's just that we are now consuming a lot more than we ever did before because we have multiple ways to access it. We have information overload. So it's essentially like everyone's brains are running like a computer that has too many tabs open. And so when you remove some of those tabs, of course, people are going to be able to hold attention. But when there is too much stimuli being given to people's brains, they're just holding all of this thing, all of these things in their mind, which restricts their ability to hold attention. So it's not that attention span is dwindling, it's that we are overconsuming. Because that is consumption and that is what has been programmed. When you're on your phone seven hours a day, all of that information wasn't there before. We had minimal news sites that we used to watch, like four TV channels, you know, magazines and newspapers which required us to literally read something from a paper resource instead of a screen. We're watching, we we've lost the a lot of the younger kids have lost the ability to research. Would they even know how to go into a library? This is what we're looking in search by. So it's moved. And also we cannot judge that generation because that is what they were born into. This is what we created for them. So it's really important that we then adapt to them as well. Or you are going to be left behind. Put this just plain and simple. So everything needs to be pressure tested again, often and regularly, and with people that you don't just cherry pick from an audience. So many people go, I asked this person, I asked that person, I said that is called confirmation bias. You are cherry picking things that you want to hear and you are letting them re reinforce your bias. You need to be hearing things from people that go against what you believe in. You can choose whether you want to listen to that or not. But I can guarantee you there'll be a pattern in what you hear, and it means that that's what you need to change. And if you don't do that, then eventually what's going to happen is there's going to be trust erosion. People will not want to listen to you. People will feel that you aren't listening to them. They can't feel seen in your content, and they will just slowly, one by one and surely drop off. And this is what we will see with the next evolution of brand is that those that understand people belonging to power, culture, community will be the ones that win. And they may not be the best, but they will be the ones that understand the most. And it's all about safety. Again, spoke about this last week. So the fix isn't panic rebranding, by the way. And not to every new shift cycle either, because that's changing so quickly and so frequently. It is understanding the differences between shifting narratives. So you could have the same voice messaging, I guess, pillars, but you can change the way it's said. So you could still mean the same things, just shift the way it's said. And that would make a world of difference. So it's not about completely upheaving. It's also not always about doing, like everyone goes straight for, oh my, I'm not working anymore. I need a whole new identity without doing any kind of auditing process. Like vis have a look at what's not working and revisit the audit. Like, where's the hole? Where's the gap? Find out what that is and fix that one part. And then all of these other things can be picked back up again. So it's like a repositioning strategy. And this is what I think a lot of people are missing. Like going and fixing a logo isn't going to help a problem if you're talking to people in a way that they don't feel seen or heard or they feel excluded from. We need more inclusive language. We need more language that is not exclusionary. So people can sometimes not even realize that they're using language that is actually excluding a whole market. This is what we mean by language development. What you say back then will not be the same thing you can say now, and you need to understand how language is evolving through cultural context. It's basically building the habit of asking, what does our brand actually signal right now to this specific person in this specific moment? And then understanding what it is that your audience wants. Because when culture is changing and narratives are changing, how often are you changing your diet, your guideline documents and your messaging documents? Or moving in a way that makes them feel heard, or even hell, like micro- niching and going down again, subcategorizing, segmenting out your audiences and potentially subcategorizing those again. So we don't want to be looking at trend reports from six months ago. Like you trying to do a reel, so for instance, an Instagram reel from six months ago won't fly today because that's what evolving is. It's you've got to be fluid and move with it. And so that means that the words that you use and the symbols that you're using every single day need to adapt and evolve as well. Someone asked me a really good question this morning in a workshop that I was running alongside my mates at TDP at the digital picnic. And they said, How often should you be updating your brand? And I was like, great question. I think from a visual point of view, that we need to be updating our visuals not as often as our wording, but our wording definitely needs to be reflected on. So I would say like it's good to revise assets and refresh. You don't need to do a complete rebrand, but it is good to keep it fluid, is what I've been saying. Is I've been trying to develop brand identities that have fixed objects, but then also have the ability for movement. And I think that that's something that people need to be considering now is that not thinking of brand as a static thing and thinking of it as a moving, evolving entity within the business. So it needs to be living and breathing. And so with that comes tone change, with that comes language change, with that comes symbol change. And can you retire something in? So it's more about the stylistic approach. What's the style of the brand? How can you keep that moving? And then potentially, like we've been doing, is building out assets that you can retire and introduce through a style that can come in and out. And I think that that's important as well. Photography is the same. And this is what we need to understand is that we're no longer living in the state of do it once and let it go. We're living in the state where we have social media now where we're conversing all the time with people. It's a two-way thing. And if you're not having those conversations, you're invisible. And if you're not reinforcing the narrative, you're invisible. Or people are going to shape their own perceptions of what they believe about you. It is totally up to you to shape that perception. So what's actually shifting? What's being recoded? And what does this mean for the words and symbols that you use every single day? You need to treat your brand language like it's a living thing. You have to. Because culture doesn't wait for you to catch up, unfortunately. And even the biggest brands have gone out, which I've just shown in examples today. And we will see this happen all the time because complacency comes in. It's also optimism bias when you think things will work out, and they don't. Everything's risk. Those that say, Oh, I stuck to this, is you know, perseverance is great, but also there's timing that's reflected in a lot of things. So the basically what I would say is that coming back to the red hat, it didn't know it was becoming a symbol, but the people who kept wearing it after the meaning changed had a choice. And so do you. Because those that wear it are reflecting values, those that won't are also reflecting their values. Two very important things to take into consideration. So what I would like to say is I guess if you think differently after this episode about what your brand is signalling right now, then that's literally the whole point. Because we need more people to hear it. What I would say is a lot of the time we're needing to address our own egos. So when we're making choices, it's important to have, I guess, a bit of a sense check with who we're working with and having other people come in and assess what we're doing so that we don't just funnel down the one pathway. So I'm seeing at the moment, like what I mean by that is that there are brands and honestly strategists who who still think in the old language, in the old brand language. So they still use the same frameworks and the same codes and the same proven messaging from old times. I saw this and called this out on Instagram recently with why brands need to stay safe and why I counted that message. Because, like I said, it does stop landing and people usually do reply. And you can, it's a it's a giveaway when people say, you know, you can't say that anymore. It's just cancel culture. It's not because it's what's happening when the world shifts and the ego doesn't want to move with it. So there is a huge ego alignment, especially when we're entrepreneurs, we want to succeed, or if we're in organizations leading a team, we want to make sure we are the people to make that change. So it's really important that you need to update your language because that means admitting to what worked before may not work now. And honestly, that can feel really uncomfortable when your whole identity is being built on what you know how do you say of being built on being the person who knows what works, you know, when and that can be it does, it feels really stressful. So yeah, I think that that's something that we need to be looking at, that we need to be looking at brand like a living, breathing document and not something that's locked, and understand that saying nothing is a signal. Until then, just understand that this is what language does, always has done, and why things can take on different definitions and meaning, and why it's important for us to understand the cultural context, especially when we are mass-producing content to a large audience of people. So know what's shifting, know what's being recoding, and what that means for words and symbols that you're using every single day, and potentially creating some kind of alignment to or checklist to realign for your brand. Because the red hat didn't know it was becoming a symbol, like I said, but the people who kept wearing it knew that the meaning had changed. So that's something that we need to consider. Anyway, if you do like that episode, um, feel free to slip in, ask me any questions. I've also started also started a Substack, which is diving into much deeper conversations like system and behavior change, which I feel Substack is probably the best platform for me to do that on. It allows me to do that. So if you are keen on big, deep meeting, meaningful, meaty discussions and insights, then you can find me over there at Taralad. Otherwise, hope you like that episode and I will uh chat to you soon. Did you like that episode? Hope so. Because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review it? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at you wanna only underscoreau on Instagram or head to www.ywan and only.com.au