| This text explores how digital media change brands. I claim here that at the core of this change is the fact that digital media make visible the network of ties that connect us to our things and to each other. Instead of brands as a mediating mechanism between consumers and products, we now have a series of discreet, local, and situated interactions that mediate that relationship. Because marketing professionals could not see these interactions in the past, they invented brand stories and representations in order to assert a certain cultural and economic relationship between people and things. Since today consumers have information on all those hidden, distributed, and unexpected connections that critically shape people's preferences and product choices, they do not have to rely on brand stories to help us decide among products and make our decisions less risky. I claim that this information abundance in itself is not the factor that challenges brand messages; rather, it is because digital media are a complex decision-making resource that allows us to make product choices without them. In the context of this complexity, I define brands as media of behavior. I argue that only by becoming visible yet seamless parts of the network of socio-technical interactions between people and things, can brands today claim to mediate their lasting relationship. |
