Welcome to the Sociology of Business. In my last post, Sell up, not out, I suggest that the most valuable consumer brands are betting on fewer customers, higher prices, and the death of the premium mediocre. If you are on the Substack, join the chat. With one of the paid subscription options, join Paid Membership Chat, and with the free subscription, join The General Chat on The Sociology of Business WhatsApp group.
I have always believed that best brands produce culture. Nike’s iconic ads and “Just do it” slogan that became part of cultural vernacular. Coca-Cola ads, recognizable even without a logo. Apple’s design that still makes us think of the company as innovative, even if it didn’t create a single new thing in close to twenty years. Esprit’s graphic design is still recognizable, and still considered iconic, long after its clothes moved to eBay. Even smaller things, like Rhode’s iPhone case or A24’s Wild Cherry restaurant and short-lived movie promo stunts.
Bad brand strategy interrupts culture. Good brand strategy produces it. The mental model of the CMO in this production context is one of a cultural showrunner. They are running a studio, making decisions about what the world they are creating contains, who lives in it, what the aesthetic rules are, how the story develops season by season.
Television (of all examples) is the model. A great showrunner builds a universe with enough internal consistency and richness (e.g. Ryan Murphy, Mike White) that audiences want to live inside it between seasons, talk about it, dress like it, quote it, and feel genuine loss when it ends.
The real question is, what’s our show? Who’s our ensemble? Who is our audience? What season are we in?
As an operating model for brands, this reframing means three things:
Narrative architecture: what is the overarching, coherent story that a brand is telling this year and that all its cultural output ladders up to? What’s the season arc? The goal
Behind the paywall, you will find a production system and cultural gravity that complete the show biz operating model for brands, along with the elements of the system of cultural production and examples how this works in practice.