Featured: Forbes CMO Newsletter

Langrand CEO Shannon Langrand featured in Forbes.com CMO Newsletter

Ideas

Today, with so many conflicting messages, varying versions of the truth and different voices speaking up, what consumers really want in marketing is authenticity. But how does a brand discover an authentic voice and message that will resonate with consumers? I talked to Shannon Langrand, CEO and founder of authenticity and strategy-focused brand and innovation agency Langrand, about discovering and sharing this message.

This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. Read the full CMO Newsletter HERE.

With all of the noise going on right now, how do brands figure out where they want to be, what they want to signal, and how they want to speak about things?

Langrand: We’re at a moment where trust is an ever-evolving premium. So if you think about what’s happening in this landscape of AI and everything else, we’re being flooded with information. There’s so much out there. It’s like, ‘What can I trust? What’s true? What’s real?’ What we’re seeing is that consumers are getting more and more savvy about what they listen to and pay attention to.

More than anything, being able to be authentic to who you are, what your brand is, and to lead with purpose is an incredibly powerful [idea] that we have to be thinking about much more.

We’ve always talked a lot about brand promise. We’re at this moment of [going] from brand promise to proof. To real versus theater. It’s not so much, ‘How can I go into this place?’ It’s like, ‘Do I belong in that place to begin with?’ And choosing those places carefully, and being authentic.

We work a lot with legacy brands, and I think we’re at a moment where there’s a lot of potential for a revitalization when it comes to being able to enter into those conversations. That Maxwell Apartment campaign that Maxwell House did is a great example of a legacy brand stepping into a cultural narrative that’s evolving around the difficulties of affording housing, being able to enter into that in a way that felt authentic. They changed their brand for the first time in 133 years.

I feel like legacy brands have this stability and history that can be a great signifier of trust in this kind of world that we’re in, but at the same time, entering into cultural narratives that are out there and that are evolving: affordable housing and what it is to rent, and the challenges of money.

How does the brand figure out which conversations it should be involved in, and which might make it seem tone deaf?

It’s dangerous territory, without question. There’s a couple things that come to mind. One is—and I can’t say it enough—have a strong sense of who you are and the natural places for your brand to be.

Number two is really doing deeper and more qualitative research, because it’s not one community. It’s not one place. One of the things happening in this world that’s changing so much, where people are feeling so much stress and pressure, is people are creating communities in different ways. Understanding those communities: We’re doing really in-depth research right now with a major healthcare institution to understand how people are thinking about health and the communities they‘re going to, and who they’re looking to for advice and counsel.

It requires a real instinct for what are those evolving narratives, the symbols and the things that are changing. How does that fit with a strong purpose that we have, and is a natural place for us to be? And how do we talk about that?

We’ve been seeing this tension between short-term performance versus what’s required longer term in this changing world. We actually started a new position in our organization we call ‘brand futurist,’ who’s really looking at the signals of change. What are the things that are happening? What are those emerging narratives? What is gaining cultural currency? Where are their stresses and pressures? And being able to use the kinds of insights of the future that is becoming to allow people to make smarter investments, campaigns and brand positioning in that way.

I think a time where brands that can deliver on that can really be more powerful than ever, but it's going to be harder than ever.

How can brands get their authenticity back and return to resonating well with consumers?

The first thing is getting back to why people have earned business in the first place and what they’re really about, because what consumers are picking up in many ways is what’s happening internally in that organization.

Brand can be a source of transformation for companies, right? This sense of, ‘God, we used to be big in this way or that, and people aren’t listening to us anymore.’ When you start going into a company and digging down and talking with them, you realize that they’ve lost their way. Part of that is having a trusted agency that can help you understand your DNA, and how that DNA connects to communities that are natural fits for you. Once you do that and you have that insight, the magic can start happening again.

Again, why are we here in the first place? That sounds like a really basic thing, but really getting into that is a pretty powerful place to be. We have this great expression in Texas: All hat and no cattle. You can’t be a cowboy just by wearing a cowboy hat, right? You have to be authentically who you are. When companies can do that kind of self-inventory and get back to where they are, number one, their employees start to love working there again and get excited about what they’re doing. Then that becomes the foundation of something bigger out in the world with consumers.