Modern brands are moving beyond traditional advertising and transactional models to create ecosystems that encourage interaction, education and community building.
Miu Miu Literary Club
“Brands as Libraries” proposes that brands should think like cultural institutions in order to deepen their connection to the public – and create their own. Often lofty and frequently loved, these cultural institutions offer a new approach for how brands can interact with their audiences: by stepping back, providing space and facilitating the culture that built them.
This seed comes from noticing that more and more brands are taking ideas from cultural institutions, knowingly or otherwise, and specifically from libraries.
Libraries are where members of the public go to read, listen and talk (quietly). Explicitly, you don’t buy things: not even the books you read. They are spaces set against the noise of the rest of the world. But it’s exactly these qualities that make them so interesting for modern brands.
By “thinking like a library”, brands can do lots of things that modern CMOs or CSOs want. Connect with their audience. Construct a world. Collaborate with visible and influential people. Become part of a wider story, not (just) selling things.
After all, what better way is there to “authentically connect with culture” than sitting in a nice spot, and reading for an hour or two?
Brands could start by granting access to materials. At this point, a brand’s library might look like an actual library: collections of relevant reading materials, made available to members of the public.
For six weeks Tank Magazine opened an exhibition space next to its office, giving the public access to its entire archive, alongside the books and publications that shaped the critical ecosystem surrounding each issue.
Hyundai has a series of libraries in Seoul, dedicated to design, travel and music, with the latter housing 10,000 records that members can listen to, free.
Protein itself has a dedicated reading space at its studios, collecting references and materials from its archive.
Protein AGENCY provides insight, foresight and strategy for global brands that's rooted in culture and the collective knowledge of SEED CLUB - our decentralised research community of 450+ global experts.
