Brands as Libraries

“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. 

Some examples: 

• Japanese brand Vowels used its New York showroom initially as a collection of the founder’s magazine collection.
• 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. 
• Acne Studios’ recent headquarters was built around a library of reference books.

This facilitation could be more involved, through the funding of public cultural activity and events. This goes a step beyond the usual sponsorship into something that looks more like patronage, integrating the cultural practitioner into the brand’s world. 

• The Fondazione Prada is a great example of this: world-class galleries which act as spatial equivalents of the brand – from Wes Anderson cafes to the uniforms of staff. The Prada library contains 43,000 books. 
• This is continued by sister brand Miu Miu’s series of events, Literary Club, which engages the public in conversations about under-read women writers.

We spoke to Phoebe Lovatt about her Public Library newsletter which she launched in 2020, the title serving as a metaphor:

"I use the newsletter to create a public archive and repository for my ideas and musings, alongside the reading material that shapes my thoughts (the tagline is: 'My brain with footnotes'). Later, I saw the potential of extending the metaphor with a curated library space open to the public, where I hosted themed Salons. Despite being one of the most ancient public institutions, the idea of the 'library' is a powerful symbol in the modern world. Libraries house the world's knowledge and offer vital 'third places' for people to gather and converse without pressure to buy. In a time of information overload, non-traditional 'librarians' like myself can help curate source material for those who seek knowledge beyond the algorithm, and connection beyond the grid."

You could even see a brand acting as its own library. Most serious companies have serious archives. By opening them up, they deepen the public’s engagement in their work and offer opportunities for activation. Recently, there was a great exhibition of Nike posters in New York, albeit not one sponsored by the brand. Nike has, however, sponsored films and books of its own: perhaps the best known of which is its celebration of Virgil Abloh’s series of trainers – a book that deserves a place in anyone’s library. 

So, what are the deeper resonances at play here? 

• Archive Fever This ties into a deeper desire to dive into the archives and history books – of brands, of cultural figures, or both, as if there’s a meaningful difference today. This can be seen in the launch of Collecting Fashion, a book by Alexandra Carl, or countless creators devoted to detailing the long-buried output of brands, across Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok. Humans really like finding stuff out! 
• Books are Cool Now The people that rediscovered print magazines in the 2010s (as per this Bloomberg piece), are now re-engineering reading. Climax (who recently collaborated with Marc Jacob’s Heaven), Reference Point and Idea Books are just three London examples of bookshops that build a community around the distribution of knowledge as much as they sell rare books.  They might all make as much money from drinks and merch as they do from direct sales – but that kind of proves the point. If books are available, as a part of life, and the basis of a community, that’s what counts. It almost doesn’t matter if they’re read or not – as Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about in his blockbuster book Black Swans. In it, he coined the idea of the “antilibrary” – a collection of books that one has, but have not read. More important is the curiosity and conversation that they provoke. Connection, as ever, is the point. 
• Culture as a Public Good We see brands stepping in to preserve culture – in a manner that was once the preserve of public institutions. The notion of cultural activity as something worth preservation, separate from market forces, could become part of the social contract a  brand has with its audience. We can think of Bottega Veneta commissioning radical designer Gaetano Pesce to build a set for a fashion show – and then distributing a free book of his work to the brand’s customers – as an example of this, or Jonathan Anderson’s curatorial activities.  

Related:

• Cyberfeminism author Mindy Seu on categorising knowledge in the age of the internet (Protein Podcast)
• Professional bibliophile Phoebe Lovatt on her story of growth (Protein Podcast)