The Intersection of Brands and Belief Systems

By Amy Castelda

Barkley recently published their State of the Whole Brand 2022 Report.

The report is based on the agency’s belief that there are two kinds of brands in the world―fragmented brands that see their brand as merely an outward-facing expression of their organization, primarily driven by a marketing department, and whole brands seeing everything they do, inside and out, as the brand, viewing the job of "brand" as everyone’s responsibility in the organization.

Despite the number of choices in the consumer market, several big companies―11 to be exact―own a large majority of major brands, effectively controlling everything you buy. According to Barkley’s definition, you could consider many of these brands fragmented.

As part of the release, Barkley hosted a LinkedIn Live panel discussion with three leaders of featured Whole Brands―Heidi Hackemer, Executive Director of the Oatly Climate/Culture Lab, Stephanie Schiller Wissink, Managing Director of Jeffries, and Eric Ryan, Co-Founder of Method and Olly.

Much of the session focused on the struggles and rewards of being a Whole Brand―“Never been easier to start a brand, but never been harder to scale a brand” and “The most of important part of a brand is not what you say, but what you do.”

When the discussion shifted to inspiration, Hackemer mentions Primalbranding: Create Belief Systems that Attract Communities by Patrick Hanlon, as a major foundational source for her career.

In a fragmented world, the idea of belief systems that brings together communities sounds foreign. Yet, branding is hard-wired into us. Hanlon refers to it as our primal code. Halon explores the seven components of the primal code showing how to use and combine them to create a community of believers in which the consumer develops a powerful emotional attachment to the brand. Basically, the root of a Whole Brand.

Skeptical? Think you would see right through this strategy? Check out this Ted Talk as a Cliff Notes of Primalbranding and see if you don’t recognize strategies you yourself are guilty of. I’ll wait…