Brands are Changing, So Is the Conversation

In the past decade, we’ve learned a few things about Brand at Liquid:

• A Brand is now a significant percentage of a company’s intangible value—on average about 20% of its balance sheet.

• Marketing is no longer the largest contributor of a company’s brand equity—it’s less than 20%.

• Brand building is an enterprise activity, which requires contribution by other facets of the company, including sales, product development, people, customer service, operations, finance, etc.

• The Brand’s role for a company is to create meaning for its employees and customers, who share the same beliefs.

• Experiences shape people’s opinions about a brand, for better or worse, and are the most powerful way to influence desired brand meaning.

In this new decade, we’re living in times of accelerated change. Old paradigms are falling. Yesterday’s solutions are no longer working. Organizations and their leaders need new capabilities, frameworks and business models to be effective as the challenges we face—as individuals, organizations, and society—become more complex. Brands need to become more adaptive, innovative, and meaningful, as customer and employee expectations shift and companies are called to deliver more purpose and meaning in what they provide, beyond their products and services. We must “hit refresh” as we look for new energy, new ideas and continued relevance and renewal.

All to say, this has shaped how Liquid views Brand today. We see brand experience, customer experience, and employee experience as needing to be intricately aligned, with Brand as the uniting thread. This alignment creates a circuit of authenticity, which results in what we call Brand Culture. Having a strong Brand Culture is the best possible relationship that a brand can have with its customers and employees. It’s an outcome, so it’s not a thing you are necessarily or actively building. But it is something you’re building toward. Liquid is building brands and experiences for this new time. Brands that are driven by meaning, deeply aligned around shared beliefs, and that seamlessly integrate brand experience, employee experience and customer experience. We believe this is the new paradigm for companies today. And to signal this shift in thinking, the Liquid Brand Exchange will now be known as: Liquid Brand Xchange.

But this is simply what Liquid believes. The purpose of this forum is to invite dialogue and discussion that contributes to this thinking, and pressure-tests it. While we are strong in our convictions, we don’t have all of the answers. We invite you to take an active role in helping shape what the conversation around Brand and Experience looks like moving forward. Liquid hopes to provide a forum for an intellectually curious audience to think more deeply about how to get people to authentically connect with brands in today’s experience-driven world. 

We invite this community to embody not only diversity of opinion, but also an open-source approach that emphasizes sharing in methods for “how.” All too often, we spend our time pondering theories, but are short on sharing details for how to make things happen. This can and should be a place where we help each other get things done. 

So, welcome to the next decade of Brand and Experience. And welcome to the new Liquid Brand Xchange.

Request to join the conversation.