The Modern Brand Playbook

Brand marketing is now about embedding brands into culture, lived experiences, and everyday conversations, and not just communicating product benefits. Two standout examples, The Ordinary’s ‘eggs’ activation and IKEA’s collaboration inspired by Severance, showcase how modern brand marketing draws on cultural relevance, emotional resonance, and experiential engagement to build long-term brand equity.

Brand marketing emphasises the importance of differentiation and mental availability. According to Keller (1993), strong brands are built through associations that are favourable, strong, and unique. Similarly, Sharp (2010) highlights that brands grow by increasing salience, being easily thought of in buying situations. A change over the recent years is how those associations are created. More and more of these associations are formed through cultural participation rather than conventional advertising.

The Ordinary’s decision to sell low-cost eggs during a period of rising food prices is a powerful example of this shift. At first glance, the campaign appears disconnected from skincare. However, it reinforces the brand’s core positioning of transparency, accessibility, and challenging industry norms. By responding to a real consumer pain point, the cost-of-living crisis, the brand created strong emotional and social associations. This aligns with Holt’s (2004) concept of cultural branding, where brands become icons by addressing societal tensions. The campaign generated widespread conversation precisely because it blurred the boundary between product category and brand purpose.

In contrast, IKEA’s Severance-inspired activation demonstrates the role of immersive experience in brand building. By recreating the show’s office environment in a real-world setting, IKEA transformed a fictional space into a tangible, shareable experience. This reflects Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) ‘experience economy’, where value is created through memorable interactions rather than functional benefits alone. Visitors were not simply exposed to IKEA products; they lived the brand within a cultural narrative. This deepens memory structures, making the brand more distinctive and easier to recall, key drivers of long-term growth (Sharp, 2010).

Both campaigns also highlight the increasing importance of social amplification. In the age where sharing your every movement online is the norm,  contemporary brand marketing is designed not just for audiences, but for participation and sharing. Berger (2013) argues that content spreads when it evokes emotion, offers social currency, or is publicly visible. The Ordinary’s unexpected move and IKEA’s visually striking installation both fulfilled these criteria. 

Ultimately, these examples are indicative of a broader shift. Brand marketing is moving from message delivery to meaning creation. Brands that succeed are those that embed themselves in culture, respond to real-world contexts, and create experiences worth talking about and subsequently sharing. While the principles of brand building remain consistent, distinctiveness, salience, and emotional connection, the execution now demands creativity extending beyond traditional category boundaries.

REFERENCES

Berger, J., 2013. Contagious: Why Things Catch On. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Holt, D., 2004. How Brands Become Icons. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Keller, K.L., 1993. Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), pp.1–22.

Pine, B.J. & Gilmore, J.H., 1999. The Experience Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Sharp, B., 2010. How Brands Grow. Oxford: Oxford University Press.