Lucinda Bounsell, Founder and Head of Strategy, Sibling Studio
Brands must adopt frameworks like rules, roles, and lore to create the deep identity and loyal devotion typically found in fandoms and video games. This shift moves the focus from transactional products to the creation of a shared, meaningful reality for the consumer.
While early branding focused on product reliability and later on lifestyle aspiration, modern brands must now function as continuous cultural systems. This shift moves the brand experience away from isolated advertising moments toward an ongoing presence within the user's daily digital environment.
By prioritizing visibility through memes and rapid responses, brands fail to build emotional depth, resulting in a generic sameness that signals desperation rather than a coherent identity. This performative participation ultimately undermines the brand's ability to stand for something meaningful ("brands have accidentally reduced culture to responsiveness").
Rather than passive observation, systems like religion gain strength through repeated, active engagement in rituals that anchor individuals within a shared world. Participation matters more than observation.
Objects like football jerseys gain immense power not through utility, but by serving as emotionally loaded markers of belonging and allegiance. The more intense the shared experiences attached to these symbols, the deeper the identity they provide to the community.
Modern internet culture has trained audiences to expect active engagement rather than passive spectatorship, requiring brands to design systems that people can inhabit and navigate. This transition moves a brand from a temporary campaign to a persistent environment where users perform their identities.
Merchandise often functions as a form of insider signaling that goes beyond simple fandom.
By elevating everyday experiences into personalized and performative routines, brands create a sense of familiarity that encourages users to adopt specific codes of participation. This shift turns a simple purchase into a recurring social act that reinforces the brand's world.
Brands that foster genuine devotion move beyond superficial visibility to establish consistent systems of rules, roles, and lore. This approach mirrors the way video games create immersive environments that satisfy a fundamental human need for meaning in a fragmented world.
As traditional cultural authorities and physical gathering spots disappear, brands are increasingly positioned to step in as architects of community. While this creates opportunities for deeper connection, it also introduces a tension between genuine community-building and cynical, profit-driven manipulation.
Social identity theory posits that individuals do not possess a single fixed identity but rather hold multiple social identities tied to different groups. These identities are defined by shared values, norms, and beliefs, allowing people to shift allegiances—such as moving from rival football club supporters to unified national team fans—provided there is no inherent conflict between the groups. For brands, this means that attempting to capture disparate customer sets requires a unifying shared value. If a brand tries to form groups around conflicting identities without a common anchor, the strategy will fail because the individual cannot reconcile those competing social identities.