The Power of Brand as a Dynamic Capability

Exploring the shift from transactional to transformational, community-driven experiences.

Oct 22, 2024

I first fell in love with brands in college. I remember a memorable lecture where a professor proclaimed something to the effect of, “Fashion brands are meaningless. You could swap any logo on any fashion ad, and it would be the same.” As an avid reader of Vogue, I was personally offended. To me, fashion brands were some of the most profound examples of the power of branding. This moment helped spark my desire to explore how brands are created. Between my master’s and PhD programs, I became fascinated with this process, eventually basing much of my research on it. This work laid the foundation for my doctoral studies, where I sought to understand how emerging fashion designers build their brands.

Plenty has been written about the concept of branding. Beyond entire professional disciplines in strategy, marketing, and design focused on defining, building, positioning, and repositioning brands, there is a robust academic field filled with diverse perspectives that goes on seemingly endlessly. Even after more than 15 years researching, conceptualizing, and building brands, I often come up for air, wondering, "What are we even talking about anymore?"

But let’s not get overwhelmed. Here’s a quick overview.

Branding is an abstract phenomenon, originally derived from the act of using hot iron rods to burn distinctive marks into cattle to denote ownership. Over time, this practice evolved into a symbol of meaning on products, and now entire disciplines have emerged to professionalize this meaning-making on behalf of companies (and people).

I write with a somewhat pessimistic view, because this meaning-making can hold the complexity of most things in our modern world. Brands come with both positive and negative connotations, intentions, and outcomes. They can be manufactured, fake, and manipulative, or they can be organic, authentic, and trustworthy. When I connect with a brand, it sparks joy. The best experiences with brands create a connection that is like meeting someone with whom you fall into a fast friendship with. Brands can hold vast stories — legends, aspirations, inspirations, hero’s journeys. And, like some fast friends, they can let you down. Most are like strangers passed on the street: simply unremembered. Our relationship to brands is complicated — and it is just that: a relationship. It can be tight or loose, long in history or just an introduction, linked through connections, or far outside our realm of awareness.

Much of the academic literature focuses on established brands and repositioning. There is still debate on what constitutes a brand and how it should be defined, which is why we see so many different takes on brand identity. (Note: I prefer Mats Urde’s approach—check out his 2024 book or the 2013 academic article for a quick overview). But very little research explores how brands are made from scratch.

I remember asking my research participants when they realized the company they were creating had become "a brand." Like the definition of "brand" itself, the responses were fuzzy. Some simply decided they were a brand. Others pointed to the moment they created a professional logo (the modern-day equivalent of marking cattle). Still others felt it happened when industry insiders recognized them. Many were as confused as I was. This led me to stop worrying about the when and focus on the how.

A core conclusion of my work is that a brand is not something that a company (or person!) is, but something that they do.To be a brand is to create meaning. To create meaning requires a complex set of skills, time, expertise, creativity, learning, action, activity, interaction, and the experience-of-doing (hence all those high paid professionals who are translating culture, behavior, aspiration, attributes, and stakeholder and market research into meaningful narrative storytelling).

To create a brand is to have a particular capability — and I argue that branding is itself a dynamic capability. It’s the ongoing process of creating and recreating meaning, continuously shaped by feedback from the market, community, and industry. Every interaction offers the opportunity to form new understanding, which in turn creates new meaning for the company (or individual) in relation to our environment (the market, the community, the industry, etc.). Despite the ease of design tools like Canva, brands don’t just fall out of coconut trees; they are deeply influenced by the context of their geography, time, founders, etc.

This ability to continuously shape brand meaning is a dynamic capability. Since meaning-making requires interaction with the environment, brands are co-created through ongoing dialogue between brand identity and brand image.

Branding is storytelling co-opted for commerce

I would argue further that, in many ways because of the false polish of the overly professional, inauthentic branding we’re inundated with now, we as consumers have grown tired and distrustful. Isn’t it ironic that the manufactured symbols we’ve designed to denote trust and meaning, now feel exactly the opposite?

At SXSW in March 2023, Archival Insights shared that while 46% of Gen Z consider themselves 'brand loyal,' many have no intent to purchase from those brands. In a world based on consumptive monetary transactions, doesn’t this leave executives little motivation to do any market activity except to throw up their hands and scream ‘what's the point?!’

Gaining traditional growth will require exponentially more resources.

And perhaps we should all be asking that same question. What is the point?

At first, this trend may seem frustrating, but when we continually ask "what’s the point?" we can distill it down to true narrative focus and meaning-making in support of communities with purpose.

We are entering the next phase of brand evolution.

Beyond co-creation, brands have the potential to become communities. Companies must serve as facilitators of culture and connection in the age of social commerce.

Transparency, connection, and relationships will be key. It’s a new era of mass-relationship marketing—not for transactions, but for social capital. It’s no longer about the value of a single purchase, but about the exponential value that comes from communities of recommendation and referral.

While we’ve tried to manufacture this through #ads and influencers, I believe we’ll increasingly see brands operate as organic communities of people with shared purpose, using a portfolio approach to revenue streams and redefining goals for growth.

It’s an optimistic outlook—and it's possible.

Onward.

What do you think?

What brands (people or companies) come to mind that produce either/both positive and negative connotations? What attributes do you admire in the brands you connect with?
How does your brand—whether it’s the company you work for, own, or your personal brand—define its identity?
What have your interactions in the market, community, or industry taught you about how others perceive your brand? How has that perception changed over time?
How might you reimagine the meaning of your work in the context of community-building? What purpose would you pursue?