When Brands Break Culture

In 2025, branding no longer works the way it once did. Trust is in sharp decline, with fewer than half of consumers believing brands are honest about their values, even as expectations continue to climb. A majority of Gen Z want brands to drive social change, but only a fraction believe they actually follow through. What has emerged is a culture of emotional saturation: campaigns filled with the language of care, belonging, and vulnerability that often serve more as viral theater than genuine support. This shift did not happen overnight. The roots go back to the 2008 recession, when disruption was packaged as empowerment, and to the pandemic, when empathy became the operating system of branding. Both moments left behind unintended costs: precarity, fatigue, and dissonance.The challenge now is not simply about better messaging. Historian Christopher Lasch warned of the cultural dangers of commodified identity, and his critique still resonates. Branding has absorbed the language of culture without taking on its responsibilities, turning rituals of care and connection into fragile spectacles. The next era must confront this directly. If branding is to have a future, it must shift from performance to stewardship, from chasing attention to embedding reciprocity, trust, and resilience into its systems. The open question is whether brands can shoulder that responsibility before fatigue becomes irreparable.

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