Podcast: How to create modern brands for the modern world

Sairah Ashman, CEO of brand consultancy Wolff Olins, explores the roles of brand and user experience, unpacking how fusing the two can have a big impact on businesses and people.

Designing and expressing meaningful, relevant and modern brands for a world that demands more of our attention every day is undoubtedly a challenge for companies in all industries.

Sairah Ashman, CEO of Wolff Olins, encourages CMOs and other brand-conscious business leaders to consider their brands from three core perspectives. Referencing a talk she delivered at Collision 2018, Sairah called these core viewpoints ‘brands as ideologies’, … ‘brands as operating systems’, and ‘brands as sensorial experiences’.

By considering brand within this framework, organisations can appraise whether all marketing elements are fit for purpose.

Brand as an operating ideology

“Consumers feel very strongly that brands are agents of change … they need to be active, to be pursuing positive change in order to be fulfilling their ‘duty’ to the world,” said Sairah. A brand is more than just a slogan or a design: it’s a contract with consumers saying a business is out for more than profit, that it intends to make a difference to its communities or the world around it.

Companies that want to engage openly and honestly with their consumers need to treat their brand as an operating system, in the real world and the digital, through which it functions.

Brand as a sensorial experience

Brands increasingly live in a digital-only environment. The age of billboard advertising is being left behind as more consumers go online first to gather information and interact with brands. In fact, Sairah noted that “by 2030, there will be an alleged digital population of five billion people generating US$13 trillion in assets being used and traded in a virtual universe.”

A mass movement to an online environment means that business leaders need to ensure their brand appeals to a digitally savvy audience in search of interaction with other like-minded individuals and demanding a say in how these brands interact with the wider world.

Sairah Ashman, CEO of Wolff Olins, presented on the Creatiff stage at Collision 2022.

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Main image: Seb Daly/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)