2 hours ago
Brands are extensions of the founders, leaders, and teams who shepherd them. Great brands represent the best versions of ourselves. Those with great longevity, history, heritage, and meaning have become lighthouses on the shore, allowing us to navigate the waves of uncertainty. A few years ago, Apple, with its focus on personal security and privacy, provided an example when the company denied government access to customer data. And just recently, Anthropic took a hard stance against the government’s nefarious use of its AI platform.
In general, brands are facing two major existential pressures: politics and AI.
Brands and politics
The uncertainty of life has been amplified by social media, creating tsunamis of content and splintering us into media sources that confirm our own biases. The Edelman Trust Barometer has found that only about 39% of people report weekly engagement with media sources offering different views from their own. The result is that many of us see only differences, intellectually blind to similarities.
This myopia becomes dystopian when we start to see segregation in our society. A concerning example: A Buckley Institute report recently revealed that about 82% of Yale University’s 1,666 faculty members are registered as Democrats and fewer than 3% are registered as Republicans. Add to that Edelman’s finding that about 70% of respondents said they were hesitant to trust people with different values or backgrounds.
Target has been our local and national example of what not to do. As a reaction to a shareholder lawsuit and boycotts on one side, they swung heavily to the other side, reducing DEI initiatives. Now, the Minneapolis-based retailer has come back to a commitment to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses and support predominantly Black universities. In the meantime, Target’s market value was $52 billion in mid-February, about half of what it was in 2021, whereas Costco’s value has risen above $440 billion and Walmart’s market cap has surpassed $1 trillion. (Granted, Target has had many problems working against it, in addition to the boycotts.)
Consider taking part in this thought experiment: Would you be willing to wear a red MAGA hat walking the streets of NYC? Or to an art event at Minneapolis College of Art and Design? Or, for another view, how about a Kamala hat in a small town in Texas? Notice the emotions you felt when you read through those scenarios.
When brands are called to be advocates for one side or the other, we start to see Red and Blue brands. For a brand, this is not healthy. When politicians recruit brands to jump into their fight, the winners are the politicians, plus the media. Brands should represent the best of who we are, and politicians are certainly not an example of that, no matter what side you’re on.
Brands can and should be the stabilizers we hold onto, to anchor ourselves to reality intelligently. This means less puffery and blatant lies by brands and their leaders. This means less attachment to politicians who are incentivized to lie to obtain power. This means brands with real, verifiable history will become more trusted, valuable, and anchoring for people. It also means those leading brands will need to be more discerning, deliberate and capable of seeing beyond the current cultural movement or hot-button issue.
Brands and AI
At the same time, the age of artificial has entered our lives, marked by the launch of ChatGPT just over three years ago. (My omission of “intelligence” is intentional, as that is yet to be proven.) We will certainly see more artificial examples in our lives, from music to creators to movies and more. And it will continuously make us question, “What is real?”
Does it matter that the McDonald’s Big Mac photo was AI generated? Was it real when it was staged, photographed, and edited to perfection before? How about the Patagonia photo of a backcountry ski scene in Big Sky, Montana? Does it matter if that was AI generated? This feeling of uncertainty is rippling through our social structures like an earthquake causing people to question the ground beneath their feet.
Regarding AI, there are three areas where we can strive to do better for the brands we lead.
- We are not going to be faster than AI, but we can be discerning when and where to leverage its speed and analytical capabilities.
- We will never be able to produce as many permutations as AI, but we will always have taste and contextual judgement.
- We may be fooled by what is real or artificial, but we can forgive, learn, and improve our actions going forward. AI can never be honest; that’s a uniquely human, moral choice.
As we collectively figure out our own personal relationship with AI, it is essential we also get back to what makes us human. Our ethics, morals, values, and belief systems have anchored us throughout history. The journey forward is not chasing waves of the moment but building anchors. These will become attributes of authenticity, with leaders who discern and preserve the value of brands.
