Exploring the Kaleidoscope: Significant Branding Trends for 2024
So what about new branding trends? Among a large amount of information, opportunities, and resources, brands are constantly striving to create a distinctive personality that will resonate with increasingly demanding consumers. Going deeper into the field of branding in 2024, we have identified a whole range of branding trends in which the use of modern technologies, crafting solutions, consumer care, and experiments are intertwined.
Why to knowing branding trends necessary?
Imagine that you have decided to plant a tree on your plot (if there is not one, then it is very useful to dream!). But you don’t know what kind of plant is better, but how to take care of it, will it germinate at all, and if so, how? And the first thought that comes to modern society now is “I’m going to Google” or “I’ll ask a friend who has already planted trees.”
The situation is the same with brands. Are you creating a new product, or are you just developing your business, and it is important to know how to grow it, in which direction to develop, what trends should be observed. But don’t worry, here we will act as a “friend who knows how to plant trees” and share with you a selection of the most important trends and directions in 2024.
1. Green Ethics: Sustainability and Ethical Branding Trends
As there is a loud call for respect for the environment and ethical behavior on world markets, brands organically weave environmental friendliness and ethical principles into their DNA. This goes beyond a simple practice, turning into an ideal where every action, from sourcing to delivery, is imbued with a deep commitment to protecting our planet and ensuring fair, ethical behavior. Sustainable development and ethical branding are of paramount importance not as trends, but as imperatives dictating the conscious creation, communication, and delivery of products and services, ensuring that the brand not only speaks but also acts environmentally and fairly.
81% of respondents worldwide strongly believe that companies should contribute to improving the environment.
2. Holistic Harmony: Brand Well-being
Brand well-being goes beyond the physical, affecting the emotional, mental, and social spheres, creating brands that promote and embody well-being in every interaction.
This is a holistic approach in which brands care not only about the physical but also about the psychological and emotional well-being of consumers and society as a whole. Companies evolve into organizations that enrich the holistic well-being of both individuals and communities.
It turns out that the branding itself should convey this feeling. Moreover, the very “health” of the brand is an important trend that should be taken into account when developing strategies.
3. Human-Centric Branding trends
In an era that is full of technology, human-centered branding is rapidly developing as a beacon of genuine interconnectedness. The theory shifts towards emotionally intense, empathetic communication and an unwavering desire to enrich the consumer’s journey. Brands create experiences that are carefully thought out taking into account human values, needs, and emotional experiences, ensuring that every interaction is exclusively personal, relatable, and authentic.
It turns out that the consumer is at the center of the brand. And in branding, it is also worth taking this as the basis of values.
4. The Art of Narration: Brand Storytelling
Plunging into the universe of brand storytelling, on which the strategy has become increasingly based, brand strategists create narratives that go beyond simple consumerism, causing a deep emotional resonance among the audience. This is more than a strategy; it is an art form where brands turn into storytellers, explaining their character, experience, and aspirations in stories that echo in the consumer’s mind while creating a strong emotional connection with the brand.
55% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if they like the brand’s story
5. Breathing Life into Brands: Biophilic Design
The combination of natural elements and design, biophilic branding, becomes a “serene haven» amid all this digital chaos. This design philosophy declares the importance of crafting and naturalness in solutions: everything looks natural, natural, and high-quality, while simple.
6. Localized Global Branding
As brands spread around the world, there is a problem of preserving authenticity among a variety of cultural codes. Localized global branding combines two sides, where global strategies are intertwined with local nuances. Brands, while preserving their global essence, but at the same time immersing themselves in local culture, ideology, and consumer behavior, creating a hybrid identity that is both global and inherently local — this is a promising new direction.
7. Fluidity in Action: Agile and Adaptive Branding
In an ever-changing market landscape, brands are turning into mobile organizations, applying flexible and adaptive strategies that respond to the ebb and flow of consumer desires, global events, and market trends. Moreover, more and more companies have an umbrella architecture, where the need for generative brand systems, including identity, is steadily growing.
8. Courageous Creativity: Experimental Culture
You can’t always say for sure whether this or that strategy will work or not. One of the most important trends of 2024 is to stop being afraid to experiment and make it part of your culture. Brands are freeing themselves from conventions by introducing a culture of bold experimentation. Yes, this is a foray into the unknown, where risks turn into opportunities to surprise, charm, and innovate, bringing colossally important experiences. Only in this way, we will be able to develop high-quality, bold, and adaptive solutions that will be able to promote the brand to a new level.
9. Transparency in Everything
The consumer today is a pure skeptic. That is why the importance of brand honesty and openness is growing more and more. Brands should invite consumers into their world, revealing the subtleties of their activities, thoughts, and even problems. This crystal-clear honesty becomes the foundation of trust as brands expose themselves, ensuring in their strategy that every aspect is revealed and authentic.
According to an Oberlo survey, three out of four consumers (74 percent) say that transparent communication has become more important after the COVID-19 pandemic (Salesforce, 2022). This includes transparency in communication and an individual approach.
10. Regenerative branding trends: “Another tomorrow”
“Regeneration” has become a buzzword in the mouths of many business leaders and brands. And there is a good reason for that. In many cases, sustainable development strategies have been reduced only to cause less harm. Emitting less carbon, consuming less energy, producing less waste. However, regenerative brands are increasingly gaining popularity, calling for caring about the world where we live.
Regenerative branding is a holistic branding trend to the role of a brand to meet the needs of a person and society, create additional business, social, and planetary value, and form beliefs, aspirations, behaviors, as well as our sense of identity, community, and cultural norms.
11. Timeless Nostalgia: Retro Branding Revival
To create a mixture of recognition and novelty, companies are increasingly resurrecting the aesthetics of bygone eras, intertwining them with modernity. The revival of retro branding is a combination of familiar elements that enhance nostalgia, which return consumers to simpler times while providing relevance and resonance in the modern market. Moreover, it causes an instant response from the consumer, since it is often something native and “painfully” familiar. And the consumer likes to indulge!
12. Crafting the Unique: Custom Experiences
Craft, customization, and uniqueness are quite strong and loud words, but they are just beginning to gain their strength and essence. This is the direction when products, services, and interactions with the consumer are developed individually, offering their own experience for each consumer. Moreover, crafting solutions is gaining strength more and more. However, it should be taken into account that creating such solutions requires a lot of resources and effort.
13. Aesthetic Purity: Still Minimalism
If we talk about what trends are waiting for us from the point of view of the visual component, then the answer is quite predictable: minimalism, purity of the visual, and simplicity of solutions. But simplicity is implied in the details, while both the idea and the concept tend to become more complex, with an interesting substrate. At the same time, minimalism is increasingly associated with some kind of elegance of the solution.
55% of the first impressions of the brand are visual. Color increases brand awareness by up to 80%!
14. The ‘I’ in Brand: Personalization
94% of marketers believe that personalized marketing has a positive impact on brand creation.
At the very beginning, we talked about the fact that the consumer is the central link of branding. This is expressed not only in the very essence but also in communication: more and more brands are paying attention to personalized offers, addressing each consumer, asking for their opinions, and creating products through crowdsourcing. It turns out that if earlier the consumer conveyed his values and vision to the audience, today the consumer tells the brand about it, which in turn offers the corresponding product.
According to Yotpo research, 36.5% of buyers in the US feel more loyal to the brands they often buy. Therefore, creating a meaningful customer experience and building relationships is vital to strengthen this loyalty.
15. Niche and subcultural branding trends
To catch up with the trend of “locality”, subcultural and niche branding is gaining popularity, focusing on specific consumer groups. This is not a mass story, it is a proposal and organization of a personalized experience exclusively for each category’s request. This will be a driver of creating new experiences, and will also contribute to the development of innovation in branding.
16. New branding trends: Using Local Leaders
Local branding implies not only specific communication, but the trend extends more to the cultural context. Artists, authors, writers, and musicians — there is an increasing emphasis on “intertwining cultures”, creating a local colorful experience for consumers. This also has an educational tendency: after all, in addition to a beautiful picture, we also get cultural enrichment.
17. Technological branding
Yes, machine learning and neural networks are still fashionable, it’s still a trend, and research proves that products or services that artificial intelligence was involved in creating and consumers are aware of this sell better. However, the purpose of using technology in branding is changing. Now it is not just an innovative solution, but a solution aimed at evoking emotions in the consumer. The brand is trying to convey its usefulness by applying new trends.
Examples of companies that are already implementing these trends in their practice
Many companies are already actively following these trends and trying to put the insights they have gained into practice.
For example, the company Booking.com actively introduces a culture of experimentation in its practice. There is now a new rule in their company: any employee has the right to conduct experiments, and mistakes are only welcome! And what do you think, having introduced the practice of widespread experimentation, the results of Booking.com were not long in coming: the company performs more than 1,000 tests simultaneously and more than 25,000 experiments per year, and revenue from search queries increased by 10–25% per year.
If we talk about conscious consumption and ethical branding, then Bee’s Wrap is a striking example that has applied this trend. The brand aims to replace the plastic film with options made from beeswax. This natural alternative to food storage is not only environmentally friendly but also more economical for consumers because it can be reused. At the same time, the execution itself is minimalistic and simple, because the main role is played by the semantic substrate.
A striking example of the use of artificial intelligence in branding is the Missoni brand, which in its concept has developed a print on the T–shirts of the new collection using AI. As the results showed, sales of the new AI collection were 25% higher compared to the usual designer collection. Technological branding is power!
In conclusion
It is very important to check whether all these branding trends work (and will work) for your business. And not all trends need to be used, the main thing is to understand where the industry is moving and «keep your finger on the pulse». Therefore, do not be afraid to try, experiment, in general, and do everything so that your «tree» of the brand increases its potential, develops, and grows stronger!
You can find out more about branding and our works on mlk.global.
Read more of our articles on Medium:
