Why Global Brands Fall Into The Gap Of Meaning

Why do global brands keep falling into this symbolic trap and repeat the same mistakes over and over?

This article focuses on the four biggest mistakes global brands make nowadays that distort their inner sense of coherence. The article will also give you practical steps on how to prevent this fall and close the gap of meaning once and for all.

This is the full and uncut version of the article. A shorter version of this article was published in Branding Strategy Insider and WARC.

Global brands today suffer from many ailments, but perhaps the biggest ones have to do with the gap of meaning.

The gap of meaning is a ‘symbolic trap’ that makes things look good on the surface (as a form) but doesn’t quite add up or make sense on the inside (as a substance). These mental disconnects can occur between meaning intended versus meaning created, between ideas and their form of execution or between brand values and the brands’ real-world behaviors. This is why marketers cannot create their strategies in a vacuum from the real world as if they do, the reality portrayed will not resemble how people look and behave in reality, and therefore will fail to resonate…