Brand Meaning

Retailer J. Crew announced a bankruptcy filing last month that will potentially close its nearly 200 stores and those of sister company Madewell. Problems for the company have been racking up for years: unsustainable debt, fit and quality issues, a misguided push toward higher income consumers (which alienated its core customer base) and extreme discounting. But J. Crew’s real problem is that the company doesn’t mean anything to anyone. It has no thematic reason for being.

What Is Happening To Our World?

The world we used to know is changing in front of our eyes – affecting the way we perceive it and how we derive meaning from it.

Consider for a moment how a Scrabble box full of single letters, lacks the quality of poetry, but if those letters are arranged in a certain way, they can then produce a poetic effect. It is the ordered relationships between the letters that create the identity of poetry.

Last month, we established that consumers do not care about (most) brands. Consumers are on a quest to find meaning and brands that succeed are the ones that help them fulfill this quest.

Consumers are on a quest to find meaning and brands that succeed are the ones that help them fulfill this quest.