Brand + Culture + Identity in Web3

A journey of self-expression and the impact Web3 has on digital identity and brand strategy.

A trip down memory lane AND how brands, culture and identity mix and could mix in the future.

From the 1940s, when brands equalled value, to 2022, when digital identity can be expressed through brand IP.

Brands are on a journey, self-expression through culture is evolving, and emerging brand strategies are bringing the two together, partly through cultural evolution and partly through a technological revolution.

In the early 1900s, branding was a new science; it was simply used for value, memory structures and awareness. When the internet evolved, brands could connect with consumers more frequently and encourage open dialogue. Technology and new consumer values create the perfect storm for another new brand standard. Suddenly selling a lifestyle or political promise just got more complicated.

This timeline illustrates the evolution of a brand’s role in culture and consumer interaction/relationship.

We are entering a new generational landscape where digital is the dominant force in culture, brand building and expression. This new landscape is party nascent in some sectors and very mature in others - most advanced in gaming where you see early avatar adoption.

Generation Z spends much of their free time on devices versus IRL. Micro expressions and creator communities are taking over, whereas other indicators used to reign, like fashion and music.

What are the implications for brands in this new landscape? How did we get here? There are significant moments in culture where brands drive the narrative, latch onto political tensions to push boundaries and appeal to youth culture. Let’s start with the 80’s - right in the middle of our newly categorised - activism phase.

In the 80’s - brand activism and identity were simple.

This -

Equalled this -

These two images look similar, and that is by design. Wearing Benetton was a statement that represented style AND values - you were globally-minded, progressive and inclusive of many types of people and cultures. A nod to open political commentary and bravery. Let’s ignore the fact it was very expensive and thus not accessible to a mass consumer. This did not matter. A Benetton rugby shirt = is progressive, which = popular and cool.

The fashion was identity and ideology all in one - “style tribes” emerged as a way for people to see themselves in others and subsequently how brands began to target youth - if you dressed in a Polo shirt, you were preppy, OP, you were a surfer, Thrasher, a skater and what you liked and who you were was (perceived to be) fairly one-dimensional. Each new era or modernization brought new subcultures, but how they were defined kept evolving. For those who went to summer camp in the 80s - your complete identity was wrapped in a Champion sweatshirt and Vuarnets.

The 90’s

In the 90’s - Brand activism was a little more complicated but still overly simplified. The complexity was associated with new views of sexuality and the loss of pure American values. So many values were explored in this decade - gender equality, new standards in beauty through waifs like Kate Moss, and more used media as a platform for raw self-expression. An even more powerful cultural music expression propelled youth grunge into the mainstream, inspiring teens to adopt completely different styles, sounds and values that took over culture. Wearing Benetton might have been progressive, and wearing Calvins was rebellious. The introduction of a unisex fragrance was 🤯.

This was before the internet became mainstream and print media dominated alongside MTV reality shows - it was about Music and Models. Before, we had a transparent view of cultural segmentation, and the media still primarily controlled the narrative.

1996 - 2002

The ‘first” internet boom - early forms of digital identity and expression -

It’s funny to hear people refer to Web3 as the Wild West. Looking at the tools available now and in the mid to late 90s, we had scattered chat rooms, message boards and pirated music. Now we have Discord chat servers, music NFTs and Telegram groups. Feels somewhat similar.

The first domain name was registered in 1985, symbolics.com. If you look at that URL today, it’s a website that became an online museum celebrating all the science and tech that got us here.

Today we have projects like ARKIVE (@arkive) documenting culture on-chain, these function as a digital record of where we came from.

Early Communities and Media Conglomerates

Community voice and power started to gain momentum - a few early platforms started the trend we see today - (IGN, Chickclick.com = Snowball). These websites were responsible for aggregating like-minded people around new values of the community that were based on what you did with your time, not what you wore. In 1998, the nascent network IGN launched a homepage that consolidated multiple individual sites as system channels under the IGN Brand and exposed content from over 30 channels. In 1999, according to PC Magazine,  IGN was **one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter. Chickclick.com, a collection of female-only sites and part of Snowball, tried to turn their IP into a brand; they met with CAA and intended to bring their web communities along. IGN worked; the rest didn’t, but the new projects we see today with commercially oriented NFT IP like BAYC and Azuki are not new.

Early blogs (GeoCities )

GeoCities made a significant impact on community formation in the early days of the internet. The rapid growth resulted in millions of websites with online content and early versions of digital identity - there were page decoration options as people became obsessed with a personalized design theme. If it were a physical community of “home” pages, it would’ve been the third largest city in America, after Los Angeles. Geocities was a peer-moderated community with similar characteristics to some decentralized communities we see in Web3. If brands wanted to impact through Geocities, they had to convince a page or community owner. This Super Mario page is impactful; it’s reminiscent of Reddit and early Twitter fan accounts. Brands were not as sophisticated at infiltrating individual digital expression at this stage - they needed more familiar frameworks like off-the-shelf advertising products.

2005 - Web2 and the consolidation of digital media and the creation of social media - a pivotal time for identity and brands

Here Comes Facebook ( original Facebook page )

In the mid-2000s, Brands needed advertising products, and social networking sites such as Facebook brought these tools in spades. With built-in features for creating a profile page and other sites like MySpace’s mixed identity and culture (music + chat )- a fusion of a new brand was born - your personal brand.

It is fascinating to look at a helicopter view of how personal brands and consumer brands forged a closer relationship through Facebook targeting capabilities. The D2C lifestyle business model emerged around this time and was partly driven by platform advertising capabilities. If you have the Away suitcase, you must be in the global - nomad tribe living the life of luxury with your overpriced case and an Instagram account full of images projecting the perfected jet-set at all times.

Social media allowed people to take control of their identities, spelling out narratives through highly curated pieces of information in the form of images and copy that projected and shaped our ethos. If they did this with a brand or influenced how they projected their identities - this was the most advanced form of brand and identity connectivity.

This little graphic charts the evolution of advertising capability on Facebook and how that drew us closer to personal brand and brand storytelling -

Social Media gave rise to the Influencer, or did it? -

Looking at 1790, Queen Charlotte was happy to endorse Wedgewood china products in one of the first “celebrity” advertisements considered “native”. Very Wang is endorsing the brand over 200 years later. The more the platforms were democratized, the easier it was to build an audience and effectively become an advertising channel. The individual became the brand and a platform reflecting the brand identity. At the same time that Facebook began, Founder and CEO Ted Murphy observed that a small group of independent creators had a strong influence on public perception. This network was essentially an email database of bloggers. In 2006, Murphy launched PayPerPost, the first marketplace to pay these bloggers to create content for brands – the beginning of modern influencer marketing on social media was born.

2020 - the rise of brands as identities & identities as brands

The “purpose-driven” brand still defines this period. So many brands are built on a set of values or a mission - think Levi’s, TOMS shoes and their commitment to social responsibility, or Warby Parker and their mission to bring to market affordable eyewear. Both used the 1:1 business model; for every pair you purchased, one was donated to the less fortunate.

As such, it's not surprising that many people still want to signal their values and beliefs by aligning themselves with specific brands. If you believe in a brand's mission, wearing their clothes or sharing their content can be a way of showing the world what you stand for.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with using your identity to signal your values and beliefs. But what happens when a brand’s identity seeps into our own? When did we start to see ourselves as extensions of the brands we love? This is a separate journey from that of becoming an influencer. We are no longer building audiences - we are simply altering our identity. For some, a brand’s values outweighed the product itself, and a shopper became a walking ambassador of righteousness.

This is especially true when it relates to social media. Our profile pictures are often adorned with logos or product placements, and we're constantly sharing links, photos, and thoughts about the brands we love. We wear their clothes, buy their products, and support their causes.

Now, Web3 CC0 projects have blurred the lines more than any other brand evolution to date. Are you supporting the brand because you are an investor? Because the values align with yours? Are you happy to display a brand when they drift from the original values or promise? The individual below is doubling down on his belief in BAYC - clearly undeterred by the recent backlash connected to various conflicting values of “bro-culture”. This is where owning a brand and personal values start to get complicated.

Where is this going? Who are some of the identity players in Web3?

We picked a handful of organizations to feature - skipping the well-known digital fashion players, PFP projects and games since they are covered in mainstream media often. There are more advanced layers of identity and less obvious brands seeking access to consumer identity mechanics.

Organizations like Spruce allow you to control your data. Moving beyond identity, data that shapes your future social graph should be owned by you versus large platforms profiting from your personal information associated with your behaviours online.

As wallets, identity and behavioural information are stored on-chain - organizations like Nuggets allow financial services organizations to establish trust between individuals and banks and offer secure payment systems which still put the consumer in control of their data.

Fashion brands are already capturing attention in the “metaverse” - as an extension of identity and values, this makes sense. CPG brands like Coke are playing with identity - do you want to display an association with Coke in a virtual world, and why? Tafi helps make this possible for brands.

Civic - take identity one step further and look at how identity connects with social rights - go beyond simple expression and transactions and understand how voting allows individuals to make a living in Web3.

What are the opportunities for brands to collaborate and be part of the new identity movement?

The most obvious approach is a PFP project where consumers are incentivized through some exchange of value to adopt a brand as their identity on social media platforms. This is the new “in the know” advertising play. A niche collective that signals values associated with that project or brand.

There are more subtle ways a brand can get involved in the new digital identity evolution:

1. Partnerships with existing projects - this is common in games with Avatars.

2. Activations in well-known or emerging platforms where merchandise is available, and ideally some form of authentic presence adds value to the user experience.

3. Provide new on-chain services if you are involved in financial services, education or community. We can already see online education certification as a practical use case for technical talent.

4. Test and Learn with Web3 CRM and marketing platforms like Sesame3, Qwestive or Holder and connect with brands and communities simultaneously

An example of a new Web3 Identity construct - we are Poolsuite and Poolsuite is us.

Poolsuite + ENS = enablement of the identity display across all web3 wallet functions.

This identity allows us to access events, benefits and connect with a new community.

Adopting a new digital identity is functional, is advertising, is culture and is a value signalling system and an ownership signalling system wrapped in a digital asset.

These images look pretty similar, and in many ways, they are, just like a photo of us wearing Benetton jerseys in the 80s.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, we are “probably” exploring something new ✌🏻.