“I always try to improve my understanding of cultures by observing or partaking in the enactment of rituals. From the mundane to the transformative. The playful to the solemn. The quiet to the confrontational. The private to the shared.

The rituals I've documented here are a beautifully simple and inclusive expression of Carioca identity that takes place on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Here, hundreds of people congregate on the large rock formation Pedra do Arpoado to watch the sunset. A communal act unifying primordial sun worship with Instagram culture. Camera phones are used as ritual props, the medium for connecting with the divine – capturing it: the sublimity, the energy, the immortality.

The next images are from different hindu rituals on Bali where I spent a month embedded in the local village culture.”

- Karl Grøndal

To learn how rituals can play a crucial role in brand building check the KGS-U course Brand Building.

Branding theory and practice are often based on the notion that brands should somehow emulate human traits and behavior. However, unscientific metaphors such as “personality” or “DNA” detach brand strategy from culture and history. Building your brand on a foundation of unsubstantiated theory distorts the scope of creative possibilities and increases the risk of misguided strategic trajectories.

Brands are not coded with anthropomorphic DNA but are built from cultural materials, signifiers, and themes. Brands are, in the words of French semiologist Raphaël Lellouche, “transmedia cultural entities.” Brand is a cultural category. Branding is—or should be—the strategic creation of culture.

Brands evolve, like any other cultural entity, from an ideological belief system expressed creatively through inspiring mythologies, meaningful rituals, symbolic artifacts, and distinct sites. Brands should therefore be conceptualized, designed, and strategized accordingly.

“Hyperculturality de-facticizes, de-materializes, de-naturalizes and de-sites the world.” - Byung-Chul Han

We need to radically rethink and redefine what we consider desirable and valuable.

The flaws in our fundamental ideologies that lead to ecological disasters, failing social cohesion, and a declining existential sense of meaning will be difficult to fix from outside the capitalist system; it needs to be an inside job. Capitalism is (as culture) a shared fiction and is therefore inherently flexible and can be moulded to our needs.

A shared goal should be to reevaluate and replace the beliefs and narratives we live by to create a world where we coexist in greater harmony with the environment and ourselves. The way we live today is not only depleting nature but also our psyche.

French philosopher Bernard Stiegler professed that we, as consumers, have been “discharged” of the burden and responsibility of shaping our own lives—and thus reduced to units of buying power controlled by marketing techniques. He argued that we have lost the “knowledge-how-to-live” (savoir-vivre) and have ultimately been deprived of the joy of life (joie de vivre). In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, this is only becoming more true.

Brands have progressive and transformative potential. Ambitious brands can be Trojan horses for societal and cultural change. Brands should move beyond simply reproducing existing cultural tropes and instead become experimental labs, authoring innovative ideologies, rituals, artifacts, and sites. Brands should become generators of an ever-expanding global cultural diversity. They should propose alternative visions for our future ideological, ecological, social, and material reality. Brands need to be part of the solution for our collective future—driving the cultural vanguard and re-enchanting the world. That said, brands can also stay relevant and meaningful to their audiences by serving a conservative purpose: upholding traditional values, protecting brand heritage, or preserving a craft.

“When desire is treated industrially, it leads to the destruction of desire.” - Bernard Stiegler

Brands should not only do this for the common good but also out of a motive of self-preservation. Consumerism is driven by desire at its core. Consumers need to be engaged to feel desire. Passive, homogenized, mindless consumerism will implode under its own weight of meaningless irrelevance. Take doomscrolling—the default mode of consumerism today—is a conveyor belt for our minds, leading straight to numb passivity and bland conformity.

The most relevant brands are—and will increasingly be—the ones able to co-create culture in the most creative, authentic, and meaningful ways. Brands that are empathetic to people’s desires and anxieties. Brands that understand, facilitate, and evolve people’s identity projects. Brands that build real communities. Brands with ambitions to shape and evolve societal discourse.

Brands should help people find meaning and build identity by becoming trustworthy authorities—recognizing and guiding their audiences by offering:

Relevant and meaningful belief systems

Inspiring myths to escape into and aspire to

Beautiful artifacts to express identity and signify group affiliation

Magical rituals to enable the enactment of beliefs

Shared spaces for community and belonging

In our commercialized and secularized cultures, I believe brands can play an active role in giving renewed meaning to our lives. We are, as a society, meaning-starved. Most existing rituals are empty—devoid of symbolic and mythological significance. This is a trend that has evolved gradually since the Nietzschean deicide and culminated by the end of the 20th century in the dissolution of all meta-narratives, in the Lyotardian sense.

We now live in the eternal Groundhog Day of hyperculture—where everything is consumed and regurgitated in endless cycles of sameness; where political intensity and stagnation paradoxically coexist; and where cultural superficiality has become pervasive, suffocating, and stealthily internalized.

It’s time to reframe and reinvent the future. We need new, inspirational, and humane ideologies to address the challenges we face as a global society and as a species. The fundamentally nihilistic ideologies and mechanistic doctrines that guide every part of our lives—our current capitalist meta-belief system—do not provide that, but only deepen the need.

The most significant brands are embedded in our collective consciousness—ingrained in the cultural fabric, shaping our fluid, flattened, and fragmented world. By building culture, brands tap into the human psyche on a fundamental level. This is a highly advantageous position, as a meaningful and relevant brand is a valuable brand. If a brand loses relevance and meaning to its core audience, it’s on a fast track to becoming worthless.

The company might still sell products based on legacy, price, or a sort of monopoly—but if nobody really cares whether the brand exists, the day a more meaningful and relevant competitor enters the marketplace, the incumbent will lose. Customers will gladly pay a premium to switch.

To learn how authentic, meaningful, and relevant brands are built, sign up for the KGS-U course Brand Building.

Storefronts is based on a research project studying retail design across the globe.

Karl Grøndal has documented a plethora of styles and concepts. From high-end brand flagships in affluent shopping areas to mom-and-pop stores in informal settlements.

Escape your algorithmic taste profiles on TikTok and Instagram and become inspired by the diversity of the real world.

The Storefronts book feature images from:

New York, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Bogota, Paris, London, Rome, Milan, Brussels, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Cape Town and other places.

Public Design is based a research project studying the design of urban environments across the globe.

“An aspect of public design I find particularly fascinating is the way we enshrine nature. The quintessential modern example lies in how the Manhattan skyline frames Central Park, juxtaposing the soft, green expanse of the park against the concrete structures of the city. If you start looking for it, you will realize we enshrine and idealize nature everywhere in the urban landscape. Integrated into buildings, trees framed by cast-iron grates along the streets or just a plant in a pot. I find this combined deification and subjugation of nature profoundly human.”

- Karl Grøndal

Escape your algorithmic taste profiles on TikTok and Instagram and become inspired by the diversity of the real world.

The Public Design book feature images from:

New York, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Bogota, Paris, London, Rome, Milan, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Cape Town and other places.