Prophet just released the 2022 Brand Relevance Index® (BRI), and boy, has it changed the way we look at the constellation of brands that dominate our culture. Of course, relevance is always a moving target. But this year’s BRI–our seventh–proves how quickly brands can gain and lose favor. As we sifted through the latest findings, a new pattern of relevance emerged. The best brands are increasingly finding success in our new normal by the way they connect with us as humans.

Some go straight for the heart, resonating with us emotionally. Others appeal to the head, drawing us in with practical benefits. And an elite few do both. These relentlessly relevant all-stars take the top three spaces in our Index this year, led by Apple, coming in #1 for the seventh straight time. Peloton ranks #2, followed by Spotify at #3. While Peloton and Spotify have been in the news recently for a number of reasons, it’s clear that loyal consumers continue to stand by their favorite brands. Bose and Android come next, with Instant Pot, PlayStation, Fitbit, TED and USAA rounding out the top 10.

Certainly, many brands gained influence in our lives because of pandemic-related changes, as U.S. consumers continue to find new ways of working and learning. An astonishing 23 of the top 25, for instance, are brands primarily used in the home (Don’t worry, there are also encouraging signs that we’re headed out of hibernation, with travel and hospitality brands perking up nicely).

Our research is based on the same foundations we’ve used since we started dissecting relevance in 2015. We asked more than 13,500 U.S. consumers about four key drivers and attributes of relevance. But this year, we filtered these responses through two additional lenses. We asked, “How are brands appealing to the head?” and “How are brands speaking to the heart?” Through this approach, we uncovered important lessons for brands looking to become more indispensable to their audiences.

Brands that appeal primarily to our heads are the ultimate problems solvers. These rely on ruthless pragmatism and pervasive innovation, two core drivers of relevance. And they have become more relevant as the pandemic wears on, with consumers looking to become more self-reliant.

“The best brands are increasingly finding success in our new normal by the way they connect with us as humans.”

These brands are competent and dependable. Led by companies like Bose (#4), Instant Pot (#6) and KitchenAid (#18), they reassure us that they’ll keep life running smoothly, no matter what.

Next, we have the brands that speak to the heart. These are driven by customer obsession and distinctive inspiration. It’s the kind of passion that turns consumers into passionate evangelists. That can only happen by making sure each brand experience makes consumers feel good about themselves, whether drenching them in sweat, like Peloton, or filling them with smiles, like Pixar (#17).

Our relentlessly relevant all-stars do it all, pulling our heartstrings even as they shine in every aspect of execution. Think of how brands like Apple, Spotify, and Android connect us to our work and the world. These all-star brands help us fulfill our goals to find happiness and strength.

How Brands Can Increase Relevance

No matter where they landed on this year’s Index, we think any brand can get closer to their customers, following the trends we’ve uncovered. Some clear steps toward building more relevance:

Build tech that’s more human – Apple, Peloton, Spotify and Android prove that when tech is personalized and helps us connect human-to-human, it resonates. Whether we are communicating directly through messages and social media, joining a new community or discovering new voices, these brands give us the power to express ourselves through technology.

Enable self-care – In an anxious age, Calm, #12, the app for sleep and meditation, scored highest of all 293 brands we studied on the “Connects with me emotionally” ranking. Despite its production problems and falling revenues, Peloton continues to earn adoration because it makes people happy. And Fitbit provides a gentle push towards better health.

Back promises with performance – More time at home means people are closer to machinery all the time, with reliability becoming more important. (If it takes months to get our hands on a new appliance, who wants to fool around with something second-best?). Besides Instant Pot and KitchenAid, Dyson (#19), Whirlpool (#45) and Keurig (#34) also made impressive showings precisely because consumers see them as better than their competitors.

Encourage autonomy – Nothing feels as good as DIY confidence, whether air-frying a chicken or filing taxes. Financial brands did well as a result, including Afterpay (#11), a financing service for online transactions, TurboTax (#46) and Zelle (#39). Highly digital and customizable, these offerings put more control in the hands of the user with ease and reliability.

Make magic – People are still eager for brands they can access from home, even as the pandemic drags into its third year. They want to escape, and content creators made up a considerable portion of our top performers this year. Marvel (#14) and Pixar (#17) outpaced even Netflix (#29), coming in first and third respectively for the attribute “Makes me Happy.” Gaming platforms such as PlayStation (#7), Nintendo (#23), and Xbox (#35) also took on outsized importance in daily life.

Emphasize authenticity – Social and technology platforms that encouraged people to strut their stuff also did well. From Etsy (#24) and Pinterest (#41) to YouTube (#70) and TikTok (#144), watching people “Create” online–whether they’re dancing, knitting or interviewing Noodles the Pug–does more than entertain. These platforms democratize the way people can create, sharing joy and inspiration with others.

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Prophet asked more than 13,500 consumers in the U.S. about the brands that matter most in their lives today. We measure their relationship to 293 brands in 27 categories, looking closely at 16 attributes. A new pattern of relevance emerged in this research: Brands are finding success in our new normal by connecting with us as humans—by appealing to the head and the heart.

“Brands are finding success in our new normal by connecting with us as humans—by appealing to the head and the heart.”

Download the Index.

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Do you know what’s funny? When you try your hand at brand humor or humorous advertising but it lands with all the grace of a herd of wildebeests. Oof. But it’s not all bad gnus. (Womp.) With a few pointers, you can break out with more mirthful marketing—whether that’s funny copywriting, playful brand storytelling or funny ads—and there’s good reason to. You won’t just crack your audience up by using humor effectively; you’ll crack open more engagement, conversions, recall, brand equity and more, and this applies to both B2C to B2B.

(One brand is laughing all the way to the bank with conversions leaping to nearly 200% when they used humor in copywriting. We’ll get to that in a minute.) But first…why did humor even evolve in humans?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Humanity

“Homo sapiens” is Latin for “wise man.” But maybe “wise guy” is a better fit. Because, from snickering at the back of the cave to snickering in the back of a movie theater, we’ve been finding things funny for a long time—like 35,000 years now. (Talk about a running joke!)

And while scientists still haven’t completely figured out the biological imperative for humor (and its attendant physiological response: laughter), they have some compelling theories. These are mostly around humor as a kind of social glue, from facilitating bonding to masking nervousness to dampening aggression to showing superiority to attracting partners. Laughter itself seems to have evolved from heavier breathing during play like play fighting or tickling.

Another intriguing theory is that humor enhances cognitive strategies by revealing incongruities. The idea is that our brains constantly make assumptions about what we’ll experience next or who other humans might be—and reward us with amusement when we realize our assumptions weren’t correct. It’s a little nuanced but still rooted in social connection.

Strike Paydirt When You Strike Them as Funny

That social connection is the true power of using humor effectively in marketing, verbal branding, or advertising; it links your humanity to your audience. It helps you find common ground, surprise and delight, diffuse tension and be relatable to your key customers or stakeholders.

But that’s not all. Being funny can lead to serious business results, improving everything from purchase intent, evaluation, and recall (turns out, people remember funny sentences more), to reach, engagement, and brand advocacy.

Take Wendy’s, for example. They’ve been roasting people on social media so hilariously that people now volunteer to get sent up in a #NationalRoastDay tweet. It’s a badge of honor at this point, and a great example of humor amping engagement and affinity.

“You won’t just crack your audience up by using humor effectively; you’ll crack open more engagement, conversions, recall, brand equity and more.”

Or consider Dollar Shave Club. That one funny breakout video? It cost only about $4,500—but generated more than 11 million views and massive media coverage. It also works for brands like Manly Bands, a wedding ring retailer who saw conversions jump to 93% (the conversion rate for one ring in particular increased to almost 200%!) when they traded boring for funny in their brand copywriting. And there are all kinds of success stories of using humor in advertising, from underwear to underarms.

But Don’t Save All Your Chuckles for Consumer Brands

B2B audiences would love more pop in their procurement—in fact, one Google study found B2B buyers are more emotionally connected to their vendors than consumers are to theirs, and nearly 50% likelier to buy when there’s a personal, emotional connection.

And again, funny campaigns boost recall, persistent behaviors and engagement for these buyers, too. But there’s another reason to dust off your comedic chops: not a lot of B2B brands are doing it, creating a massive opportunity to differentiate on top of all those other benefits.

Who could forget MailChimp’s FailChips? Or LinkedIn’s ridiculously relatable gifs for marketers? What about iStock by Getty’s hilarious take on over-posed stock images? Adobe Marketing Cloud even found a way to send up the mean streets of pay-per-click advertising.

What’s So Funny, Anyway?

It mostly comes down to incongruity. It’s about an unexpected reversal or left turn, usually near the end of a sentence, like, “I’m sorry I’m late. I got here as soon as I felt like it.” Ba-dum tss!

But there’s an art to using humor in marketing and branding. Done wrong, humor can distract from your message, weaken your credibility, and alienate or, worse, offend your audiences. This usually happens when:

• Making fun of a specific group of people
• Being ham-handed with a sensitive topic
• Cracking a joke at an inopportune time (like a natural disaster or PR crisis)
• Using a kind of humor that’s at complete odds with your brand
• Attempting to wield humor without truly understanding its subtext (something you’ll find out fast if you get it wrong)

Three Principles to Land Your Punchline

With a few pointers, you can reap the benefits of using humor in content marketing, from emphasizing brand or product benefits to enhancing brand storytelling to building emotional connections, to engendering support (and funds) for societal issues, to generating explosive engagement on social.

1. Know Your Audience, Industry and Topic

It’s pretty table stakes for general branding and marketing but glossing over this can really kill your comedic campaign. You need to truly understand the personas in your target audience segments before you try to roll out a humorous ad or funny product video.

And you’ll want to go beyond typical demographics and go deep into psychographic segmentation to uncover things like beliefs, values, personality traits, lifestyles and hobbies so you can tailor your humor accordingly. There are two reasons: 1) you need to know what your audience responds to and 2) how not to alienate them. Zoomer humor, for example, is incredibly nuanced and increasingly meta-ironic or post-ironic—use either incorrectly at your peril.

So, find out what makes your audience tick. Are they impassioned social activists that appreciate pot-shots at the status quo? Stressed-out shoppers with a penchant for sarcasm? Extremely online intellectuals who like a bit of irony? Stay-at-home parents, who prefer deadpan to dad jokes? Knowing their likely personality profile will help you figure out what they might find funny, how far you can take it and what they could find offensive.

You also have to know your brand’s unique value proposition, product benefit, service offering, customer pain points, any product or brand weaknesses, and the context in which you operate—and know it inside and out—to know what’s funny about it. Try brainstorming your brand’s attributes, benefits, product use cases, industry quirks, even your product weaknesses—and then see if you can make unexpected and comical connections between them and your audience, competitors, recent trends, adjacent industries—get creative! You can use any of these elements to craft chuckle-worthy content.

Canned Laughter? No, Cannes Lions.

For instance, Zendesk, a customer service software provider, used a common customer service pain point—annoying support agent calls—as the basis for their funny “Sh*t Support Agents Say” video.

Love Cheetos but not orange-stained fingers? Same. But you can even poke fun at your own product limitations like these. In fact, doing so won Cheetos a 2021 Cannes Lion for their digital, social and out-of-home campaign that was based on exactly that: the (now iconic?) orange powder stain. You could say they created campaign success that was hard to…touch.

Even if you represent a more typically “dry” industry like materials engineering or healthcare, you can still generate solid results with humorous campaigns. In one study, a funny and a non-funny healthcare ad went head to head in a split test—and the funny one won, increasing time spent, credibility and message recall, no joke.

2. Know Your Form of Funny

But which kind of humor will work best for your brand? Because there are different ways to be funny in marketing—to different effects. Let’s take a look at some of them, with examples.

Light Humor – Sometimes a chuckle is just as good as a guffaw when it comes to making an emotional connection and delighting your audience. Light humor is more about being playful in your tone as opposed to landing a zinger of a punchline, like Bank of America’s “Can’t Stop Banking” video that poked gentle fun at the phenomenon of being on our phones.

Deadpan – Using deadpan humor can create a doozy of an impact. It’s a dry-wit display of emotional neutrality, usually contrasting a highly emotional moment—like Allstate’s Mayhem campaign (unleashing untold mayhem for competitors trying to keep up, no doubt). That Dollar Shave Club video mentioned earlier? Also deadpan.

Observational – This is when you make fun of a recent trend, larger human condition or current event. It’s delivered as a kind of conspiratorial, winking aside that tells the audience you get it, you relate and you’re both on the inside of that joke, whether it’s Apple poking fun at “the whole work-from-home thing” or Wendy’s roasting women’s razor maker Gillette Venus with their cheeky tweet, “You’re going to love our new pink straw. It’s an extra $2.50.” Pow! Take that, pink tax!

Absurdist or Surreal (and sometimes even downright impenetrable) – This humor is about being completely illogical to make people laugh and, generally, the weirder the funnier. It works as a foil to common, everyday situations where no one expects you to go off the rails (incongruity, remember?). Think: Skittles’ exhorting you to “Contract the rainbow!” or the Old Spice guy instructing you to, “Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like” before suddenly being on a horse.

Irreverent – A close cousin of the absurd is irreverent humor. This kind of funny lacks even a smidge of decorum or seriousness, instead favoring a brash, #nofilter and deliciously disrespectful breed of comedy designed to get attention and make you remember it, damn it. It’s about being bold and unflinchingly funny, like the consumer budgeting app, Cleo, which tells you, “If you don’t love Cleo, it’s probably you.” Or Manscaped, a men’s grooming brand that sells “tools for the family jewels.”

3. Know Your Moment

We haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways you can be funny. But there are just too many kinds of humor to mention—which makes for a great segue into the problem of too much humor (see what I did there?). And, incredible, I know, but there really is a limit to making people laugh, as I’ve proven (that was meta-irony, by the way).

Indeed, one Twitter study found that 50% of people surveyed think that over-reliance on humor comes off as outdated. So it’s important to find moments for strategic levity, such as a singular campaign or a single asset like a video, banner ad or landing page—or even just a single component of those assets, like a hilarious headline, asinine aside, cheeky CTA or funny footnote. You can even have just an amusing brand name without the rest of your content is particularly comical. Remember, your mission is to surprise and delight—and you can’t do that if every line is a zinger.

Even if your verbal branding strategy is based on a uniquely hilarious brand voice, be judicious in its expression and the frequency of the funny so you don’t lose focus, attention, credibility…or your audience. Video is an ideal place to start. In fact, funny videos are the likeliest to go viral, like when Match.com had hellishly good fun with their “When Satan Met 2020” video (absurdist meets observational for those following along)—and generated some heavenly results, like 6.7 million views.

You Don’t Need a Ladder to Reach Funnier Heights…or Do You?

And, as we’ve seen, funny videos don’t just work for industries like online dating, which, okay, some might say is low-hanging fruit. Murphy Ladder isn’t an overtly funny brand…all the time. But they found a way (not to mention the most irresistibly irreverent actor) to make a product video literally hit you in the face with funny instead of beating you over the head with bland brand messaging.

Speaking of brand messaging, again—you can build an entire verbal brand strategy around humor. You’ve seen all the great reasons to do so. But before you do, you’ll need to apply rigor and a methodical approach (seriously, get downright pedantic) to defining your brand of humor, its expression, the principles underpinning it, and its guidelines, so your brand copywriters and communicators know exactly how to be funny while being firmly on-brand and on-strategy.

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Many of us have been living in a world that feels a bit like Microsoft’s metaverse for the past two years. From Outlook and Teams to LinkedIn and Xbox, Microsoft has built a growing network of digital experiences that keep many of us in its ecosystem throughout much of daily life.

While the experiences don’t yet connect to form the fully immersive digital world deemed a “metaverse” it’s clear they are well-positioned to become a key player. Recently, this ecosystem got a monumental reinforcement in the form of the biggest acquisition in the company’s history: A near $70B acquisition of Activision Blizzard, one of the largest video game developers and publishers in the world. Through this move, the embattled Activision Blizzard will receive a lifeline from Microsoft in exchange for the developer’s hits, including “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush.”

Microsoft is not the first tech firm to make a significant move toward the metaverse, with digital players increasingly positioning for this future. From Facebook rebranding their parent company to Meta, to Snap acquiring a host of augmented reality companies, many digital companies see the metaverse as the next frontier.

These companies are recognizing the significant shift in how consumers are engaging with digital platforms and are placing huge value on the impact these platforms can have with Gen Z and beyond. But with the metaverse arms race accelerating and the benefits of digital engagements clear, how can brands win in these new worlds as they continue to develop?

Brands Building Digital DNA

As the metaverse continues to unfold, brands shouldn’t wait to start engaging. Early adopters will earn an advantage by diving in with the platforms today, building native credibility in a market skeptical of brands, while gaining a competitive edge on brands that are slower to adopt this next frontier.

Brands that wait until the platform reaches consumer saturation will not drive incremental benefit beyond that of an additional ad channel – the opportunity in the metaverse is much more significant. There is no better way to prepare your brand for the future than to jump in now and refine your digital strategy and presence as you go.

To help with this transition, Prophet has identified three key brand strategy questions to consider:

How Can Your Brand Meet a Need in Consumers’ Digital Lives?

Brands entering these virtual worlds shed their physical limitations and have an opportunity to rethink the value they provide to their consumers. The companies that win in this space are the ones that create experiences to meet a need within this digital ecosystem while reinforcing the brand equity strengths carried through from the physical world.

Nike was able to answer this question in preparation for the introduction of NIKELAND on Roblox, clearly identifying that they would be able to support consumers in digitally expressing themselves, both in lifestyle and clothing.

How Might Your Brand Come to Life Within a New Digital Environment?

The metaverse creates immersive opportunities for brands to build relationships in real-time, beyond the bounds of the sequential conversations that dominate social media. In the metaverse, brands must be wholly authentic and dynamically engaging – and the ones able to strategically translate their voice, imagery and experiences into this context will earn new levels of consumer favor.

While AI-based conversational technology is yet to be widely utilized by brands, we can look to advanced virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Samsung’s Bixby for inspiration on how brands will soon be capable of continuous, real-time conversations with consumers. These dynamic and infinite touchpoints will demand continuous on-strategy voice and tone to build brands within these new platforms.

Ultimately, How is Your Brand Going to Commercialize the Metaverse?

Commercialization in these digital spaces goes beyond anything possible today. It’s more than just selling products – digital engagements provide an unparalleled opportunity for collaborations and completely immersive branded experiences on platforms where creators have the most power.

As augmented reality blurs the lines between reality and technology, brands will have unprecedented context for consumers’ daily lives and will need to commercialize themselves in ways that feel authentic and value-added. When brands overstep their bounds or present themselves in overly commercialized or sales-focused contexts, consumers will perceive the integrations as creepy and reject the offerings entirely.

“The companies that win in this space are the ones that create experiences to meet a need within this digital ecosystem while reinforcing the brand equity strengths carried through from the physical world.”

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Mark your calendars, brand watchers. We are getting ready to release our seventh edition of the Prophet Brand Relevance Index®, and it’s full of surprises. Without giving too much away, we can tell you that we have 96 new brands in the study this year, many of which landed in our top 50 brands. And as we’ve seen in previous years, relevance continues to be a key driver of growth – with the top brands outpacing the average growth rate in the S&P 500.

The new crop of winners shows that while relevance has always been a moving target, two years of seismic shifts in consumer behavior have solidified the way people adopt and abandon brands. And these changes go far beyond the obvious. Of course, digital matters more than ever. And we can see brands that have made intelligent moves to meet these cultural moments are those making the biggest gains.

For the second year in a row, that’s meant honoring how much time people are spending at home. It’s not just where the heart is—it is where the head is, where the body is, where everything is. And so, it is no surprise that every single brand in our top twenty-five represents an aspect of our home life. And a number of brands in the top 50 show that as the pandemic evolves and confidence builds, people are itching to come out of hibernation.

But more importantly, our brand thought leaders discovered that new patterns of relevance are emerging. The team includes:

• Scott Davis, chief growth officer
• Marisa Mulvihill, partner, global head of brand & activation
• Christine Brandt Jones, senior partner, global insights
• Chris Burzminski, associate partner

“We’ve found that the four components underpinning our relevance research are as meaningful as ever,” says Mulvihill. “Brands still derive their relevance from customer obsession, ruthless pragmatism, pervasive innovation and distinctive inspiration. Yet as we continue to refine the science of relevance and interpret post-pandemic changes, these components express themselves in new ways.” Based on responses from 13,500+ U.S. consumers, we looked at 293 brands in 27 categories. We’ve discovered that brands are finding success in our new normal by connecting with us through three distinct avenues.

Brands that solve life’s frustrating problems are leading the first path to relevance. These ruthlessly pragmatic, pervasively innovative brands stand out by fueling the current need for self-reliance and DIY confidence. As we recalibrate our routines through this increasingly digital life, we choose only the best support staff. We want appliances, products and services that are smart enough to enable a new reality spent mostly at home.

“Brands that solve life’s frustrating problems are leading the first path to relevance.”

Others win us over almost by magic, increasing relevance by speaking more to people’s hearts than their heads. Customer obsessed and distinctively inspired, these are the names that turn customers into fans, loyalists and collectors. Devotion and demand like this are born from experiences that make people feel good about themselves, whether by providing easy access to escape or luxury that makes us feel alive and special.

Then there are those relentlessly relevant all-stars that somehow do both, hitting us simultaneously in the head and the heart. It’s because they are easily personalized, making us feel like they actually know us. They connect us to our families, work and the world. They help us discover communities of others who share the same passions. They fill our intimate spaces with stories and sounds from the outside. They help us fulfill our goals to find happiness and strength. These are the brands brightening the world, every single day.

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Get ready, brand strategists – 2022 is going to be your year. The last 18 months have been packed with plot twists, creating new opportunities for better brand activations and experiences. And it’s not just the progression of the pandemic, supply-chain challenges, rising inflation or ever-more-digital consumers that’s caused this shift.

It’s that authenticity matters more as people struggle to absorb all those changes. They’re switching buying behaviors and brands at an unprecedented level. One recent study finds that 75% of consumers have shopped in a new way, with 36% trying a new brand.

To keep customers and attract new ones, companies need to prove they support the greater good in a way that’s unique to their brand. That’s terrible news for brands not actively building and delivering against an authentic purpose that consumers can believe and relate to. But this approach offers wide-open growth avenues for those that can find better ways to connect with customers. We expect the savviest brands to lean hard into these five trends in 2022:

Brand Spending Makes a Comeback

Companies are increasingly aware that they can’t earn customer loyalty without a clear brand identity. There’s just too much noise in the market, and too many options for consumers to choose from.

Clear communication about what a company stands for requires investing in a well-defined brand identity and awareness. How can companies expect to make connections if their target audience is unclear about what they are? We expect to see a greater focus on brand with more dollars shifting –often from the demanding budget – into brand building. Additional resources will allow marketers to ensure brand efforts are clear, inspirational and delivered with energy.

We even think brand and demand may stop fighting and find love, as the two resolve tensions and work together in harmony. CMOs will develop integrated models where brand –the long-term efforts to drive awareness –and demand – which seeks to get audiences to act immediately – are synchronized with shared agendas and intertwined goals.

Got Purpose? Prove it, and Make Sure it Benefits the Planet

For years, we’ve known that consumers are increasingly choosing brands with a higher-order purpose – they want to buy from companies that make a difference in the world. This year, they’ll expect brands to put their money where their mouth is. They’ll want action, like Lush leaving social media because it’s become toxic for their customers, or Nike, investing tens of millions in countering systemic racism.

Sustainability and environmental concerns are especially important. Too often, companies isolate ESG and DEI policies, but they need to become central to brand purpose – a golden thread that winds through every aspect of the organization. ESG and DEI aren’t just about mitigating risks. These efforts add value to everything the company does.

“To keep customers and attract new ones, companies need to prove they support the greater good in a way that’s unique to their brand.”

Whether companies like it or not, protecting the planet is the No. 1 concern for both Gen Z and millennial audiences. Led by firebrands like 18-year-old environmentalist Greta Thunberg and 21-year-old gun-control activist David Hogg many see themselves as warriors acting to protect the planet. These young consumers can spot green or virtue-washing efforts from miles away and will punish companies that get it wrong.

All Digital? Nope. Never

Once upon a time, the business world envied those digitally native direct-to-consumer brands and the way they dinged the dinosaurs who shopped in brick-and-mortar stores. But with the defeat of Casper in the public markets, it’s clear omnichannel rules, and those D2C darlings have stampeded toward the mall. Warby Parker, Glossier, Allbirds and Wayfair are all proving that ­humans like to look, touch and feel what they’re buying.

Led by companies like Apple, Lululemon, Nike and Samsung, this trend toward experiential retail is already strong and will continue to grow. Levi Strauss & Co., for example, is opening 100 new stores this year, and Lego intends to open 174 new locations.

While people know they don’t need actual stores to transact, they do need them for experiences – especially as consumers long for post-pandemic connections. People have spent the last 18 months re-evaluating many priorities. They’ve learned that they love digital for cutting down on the drudgery in their lives, like grocery shopping and banking, so they can focus on the experiences that mean the most to them.

They do, however, want to experience products before purchasing, especially in certain categories, and we expect to see more brands open physical spaces.

The Decline of the Mega Brand

After decades of consolidation, conglomerates are starting to see the benefits of breaking up. With a CEO openly mocking the myth of synergy, GE is leading the way, followed by Johnson & Johnson and Toshiba Corp. More will follow as companies increasingly challenge the belief that one brand can work in many markets, and that bigger is always better.

Companies are asking themselves the hard questions: Can we continue to use a single brand, expecting it to be equally meaningful among different verticals, markets and customers? Is that one brand universally credible? And if not, when is time to switch that strategy?

Facebook’s recent decision to become Meta, illustrates another facet of this trend: More brands may increase a company’s agility, allowing it to pivot in more precise (and perhaps even more affordable) ways.

Midlife Crises Spark Unicorn Reinvention

Remember all those companies we admired back when BlackBerry dominated the market? Twitter (founded in 2006), Airbnb (2008), Pinterest (2009) and Instagram (2010) are all middle-aged now. No longer the cool kids, they need a refresher course in disruption. As they revisit purpose, they need to better understand empowered consumers and find new growth channels. How and where can they innovate as they face younger rivals?

To keep up, they’ll need creative Web 3.0 pivots. We’re already used to watching elderly unicorns struggle. Google used its transition to Alphabet to age gracefully, but once-huge tech brands, such as Jawbone, GoPro and Groupon, have languished from lost relevance. We expect plenty of big news and at least a few missteps as these almost-old digital natives reinvent themselves.

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