Rereading. Rethinking.
Expanding the intellectual space of the brand world. Disciplinarily – beyond the confines of our own field. Temporally – through a deliberate look back. And methodologically – by not immediately asking about application, utility, and exploitation. Above all, with a critical stance: not affirming, not appropriating, not primarily concerned with quick relevance, but examining, questioning, differentiating. Whoever speaks about brands speaks about the public sphere, power, trust, attention, meaning. Why, then, should the scope of reflection be limited to marketing theory? Why not read literature, sociology, art, political theory, history alongside it? And why not reread texts written ten, fifty, or a hundred years ago – in different constellations, under different technological conditions, yet addressing questions that still concern us?
Marketing has a business model: forgetting. Forgetting what was celebrated as a breakthrough yesterday. Forgetting that every “revolution” has a prehistory. Forgetting that terms age – while the mechanisms they describe often prove remarkably resilient. The new sells better than the continuous. Disruption sounds louder than duration. Trend appears sharper than structure.
Thus, a presentist hubris takes hold: everything begins now. Everything is different. Everything is without precedent. Memory becomes inconvenient. Because it relativizes. It may show that what appears radical is, perhaps, a variation. With different means, yes. With different speed. But perhaps with a familiar grammar.
“Rereading. Rethinking.” begins here. Not as a gesture of cultural criticism. Not as nostalgic retreat. But as an invitation to switch memory back on. Old texts will be opened again. Ten years old. Fifty. A hundred. Not systematically. Not along a canon. Not for strategic usefulness. And not only texts in the narrow sense.
We might read whatever carries meaning: essays, novels, crime fiction, fragments of theory, manifestos. Perhaps even photographs or images. Images argue, too. Novels model the public sphere. Crime fiction tells stories about order, power, morality, trust. All of this touches on questions of brand, communication, interpretation.
The obvious will not dominate. Not what already circulates in marketing seminars. Not what can be seamlessly translated into tool logic. Instead: the open, the accidental, the different.
This is also a second objection. Not only against forgetting, but against the pose of the all-knowing expert. The marketing commentator wants to explain conclusively. The more critical mind prefers to observe. To remain curious. Not to classify immediately. Not to instrumentalize immediately. Not to translate immediately into frameworks. But to endure, at first, that a text, an image, a novel may want something other than optimization.
“Rereading. Rethinking” will not deliver checklists. No “Five learnings for your brand.” No forced updates. The respective object will lead the way. Sometimes it will remain strange. Sometimes it will move surprisingly close. Sometimes it will shift terms that today seem self-evident. And sometimes it will simply remind us thatattention, power, trust, and the public sphere were not invented by the latest platform.
Perhaps it will turn out that less changes than is claimed. Perhaps the truly new lies precisely where no one has been looking. “Rereading. Rethinking” will appear irregularly. Without an overarching theme. With a willingness to be unsettled.
