What would branding with substance mean?

Ever since I have worked in the advertising business there has been a trend away from advertising in the conventional sense.  The creative advertising production process is a counter force to this in the way that it is structured and rewarded but around the edges lots of different models have sprung up to demonstrate that in the modern world of people who know what they want and how to get it, the role for advertisements to inform people about products is diminishing.  The engagement model, digitally led, experience led, brand as service,  brand as media, brand entertainment, destination planning, consumer centric planning; all of these speak to the notion that marketing needs to be worthwhile in its own right in order to earn an audience.  It needs a point or a purpose that make people choose to engage with it.  I started to play around with the idea that basically brands used to create intangible image associations but now they need substance.  Its no coincidence that the word content is such a buzz word - content has substance and therefore can have value for people that advertising in the traditional sense can not.  

So knowing this the problem becomes not what but how.  How would you go about creating real things of substance for brands?  This is a question that brand marketing agencies are grappling with at the moment.  Everybody seems to be able to define one way or another what the answer should be but far fewer can actually execute it in a satisfactory way.  The way seems blocked.  I think we have all of the answers but we need to think bigger.

If the old approach was about the image that a company wants to create then creating substance would be more about the things that it actually does in the world.  If you want to be defined by your actions you need to start thinking about what the right kind of actions should be.  A person of substance would have good qualities, depth and character, values and ethical principles.  Sustainability offers a framework for how companies can engage with all of these things but quite often this is a function of CSR rather than branding.  This blog is about the idea that all  brands need meaning and purpose and authentic stories to tell and many other things of substance.  But its also about the idea that sustainability thinking offers up nearly all of the answers that it has been looking for.  At the moment I'm pretty sure most people won't see it like this and will see CSR and sustainability and Marcoms and branding in worlds of their own.  But new culture and ideas are about fusing and joining the dots within what we already have.  So here the idea is to smash these worlds together and see what colours shapes and patterns emerge.