Today, we are arguably a more media-driven culture than ever before – but the media itself has undergone a seismic shift.
Where there was once a straightforward channel of communication between brands and the media, and the media and consumers, today a complex, multidirectional tangle of relationships has taken its place. The media as we knew it has been decentralised, largely in the wake of the rise of social media. Consumers today hold much more power and are more sophisticated than in the past – and as a result, brands have to work far harder to capture and maintain their attention.
Thanks to social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X, consumers are increasingly turning to influencers, and each other, for information.
Now that traditional news outlets are no longer the gatekeepers of the relationship to consumers, so too have brands lost having complete control over their own message. Now, there is much more pressure on businesses to be consistent and to have integrity in how they behave internally and externally.
Simply putting out advertising, even if it’s award-winning, is no longer enough. From brand purpose and investor communications through to employee experience and supply chain management, today’s brands need to consider every aspect of their business operations. But in order to really cut through, they must go even further than that. The brands that will be successful both now and in the future are those that are really able to articulate their purpose and to use it as the driving force behind their activities.
At The 10 Group, the heart of our strategy work with clients lies in digging out the ‘why’ – what drives them as a business and what makes them different and building the brand identity around that from the inside out. Often, the why may be tied to a commercial objective like launching a new innovation or talking to a new market, but for truly innovative companies it’s bigger than that. The winning firms will be those that can successfully navigate the need to solve tomorrow’s problems without alienating their audiences of today.
Regardless of what a company’s purpose is, it’s fundamental that they understand and embody it. In the current landscape it’s harder than ever to stand out, particularly with the increasingly short attention span of consumers. Brands whose ethos truly runs through what they do on a day-to-day basis will be the ones that present to the market consistently and with a clear message – and cut through the noise.
