WHITE PAPER
SUPERHUMAN

2021 marks the 15th anniversary of SKINN BRANDING AGENCY. We’ve seen the branding world evolve at a rapid pace over the years. We feel an even bigger and faster revolution is coming due to these changing times. That is why, as a birthday present to ourselves and our network, we created this white paper on the future of consumer brands.

We love keeping ourselves up to speed, keeping our finger on the pulse of the industry to best serve our clients. We aim to prepare ourselves and our clients for success in the coming 15 years. We can't wait to see what happens and by gathering insights we can better prepare for what's to come.

Curious about the full white paper? Download the long read via this link. Not much time, but still curious? Below we summarised a few important things for you.

Brands are built like people, we have known that at SKINN for a long time, that is what we have built our business on until now. And the future seems to agree with us. The core of a brand is defined by its values ​​and personality, just like a human being. These will also become the focus of brand identities and strategies in the future of consumer brands.

We see two drivers of positive change: when empathy and technology come together, we expect brands to become not only more human, but even superhuman or superhuman. This also means that brands will understand the customer and his needs on a completely different level.

Society is increasingly demanding responsibility from organisations and companies for what they cause in the world. People want to live more mindful lives and activism like #metoo, climate marches and Black Lives Matter became global movements thanks to social media.
Advanced technologies such as AI, 5G, VR, AR and blockchain are increasingly invading our daily lives. In the meantime, consumers also expect that everything will be delivered to their doorstep as quickly and easily as possible.

These trends in our society have a major impact on how brands will become more and more human in the coming years, eventually leading to what we will call brand intelligence.

Brands will use data obtained through the most advanced technologies to create meaning in consumers' lives in a tailor-made, personal way. We will start to see brands as a kind of life partner.

How did we come to this mindset? We based ourselves on a series of macro trends that we discuss in detail in the white paper, and their influence that we observe in society.

In the first phase, the short term, we see a change in the most visible layer of a brand. Brands will adapt and put the customer first. Authenticity and transparency are the driving force here. Brands no longer sit in ivory towers, the one-way tactics of the past give way to direct conversation with the target group. Barriers are broken and service is the highest good. Collecting data to better understand the customer and thus help them with what they are looking for is a crucial step towards the future and making brands more human.

As a brand, you should therefore not only look for your tone of voice and personality, you should also learn to listen to what your customer is looking for and what he needs. An extensive verbal identity, both in written word and for voice technology, is gaining importance in the branding process.

As a brand, you market a product or service to generate profit, but in the medium long term this is no longer sufficient. As a brand, you should think thoroughly about your place and role in this world. Setting realistic goals is the key to success. Honesty and transparency are becoming indispensable. It certainly doesn't always have to be about big goals, as long as they fit within the DNA of your brand.
Sustainability and ethics are becoming the Olympic minimum, so they will no longer be able to fulfil that role.

This has the logical consequence that the choice of certain brands will serve to communicate your own values ​​with the world as a customer. Building a long term relationship between customer and brand becomes the goal. Branding agencies will have to watch over the honesty, transparency and meaningful development of a brand. Brands no longer operate from an ego point of view, but from a community feeling. Also in the design of a brand there will be a shift from 'I' to 'we'. What do you stand for as a brand and what is your added value in the life of your customer, these are the strategic questions par excellence.

In the long run we see that the visual design part of a branding will no longer play the dominant factor. New models of identity design will emerge, where empathy and technology go hand in hand. Purely digital brands will also see the light of day more and more. As a digital brand you can significantly expand the brand experience, digitally the limits of what you can think of are endless. Customers will expect your brand universe to be available online and will look for convenience as well as entertainment. The role of 3D spatial design and advanced motion design will gain in importance.

When we combine all of the above scenarios, brands become superhuman. Brands must be able to think for and together with the customer. And this with the necessary humanity. Brands build genuine long-term relationships with customers and engage in personal conversations, directly with and tailored to the customer. Investing in the right technology to capture the necessary data for this is becoming a necessity. Branding becomes a matter of interaction design. Making the most of that data and gaining the customer's trust to share data with brands is the ultimate goal when empathy and technology are combined. Only then will we call it brand intelligence, only then will brands be regarded as superhuman.