The Drum co-founder Diane Young met music legend Nile Rodgers for a lesson in how to make brands cool after the release of Havas’s latest Meaningful Brands study.
The Chic star was adamant marketing can be a force for good in the world and explained how his own brand choices today were formed by the people he idolised as a youngster.
“What winds up happening is we internalise it and as we get older we say, ‘I wanna wear this or I wanna wear that, I wanna drink this or I wanna eat that’.
“If those brands stand for something cool, something good, something that’s responsible, that helps the community, and people can put those things together, you’ve got a win-win there.
“We love it because it’s part of who we are but we also love it because it’s part of who we can become.”
Rodgers was speaking to The Drum after helping to launch the latest Meaningful Brands research which revealed that 77% of brands could disappear and no one would care.
The annual Havas study claimed that brands considered meaningful outperform the stock market by 134% and ranked Google, PayPal, Mercedes-Benz, WhatsApp, YouTube, Johnson & Johnson, Gillette, BMW, Microsoft and Danone as the top 10 meaningful brands in the world.
“Our findings show that consumers will reward brands who want to make the world a better place and who reflect their values,” said Maria Garrido, chief insights officer at Havas Group.
“A massive 77% of consumers prefer to buy from companies who share their values. Brand activism will become a crucial part of a brand’s strategy.”