Proximity.
Presence.

How We Move Is How We Live

The pandemic changed our interaction with the world around us and, in the Move Arena, decisions have become less about “how I get to people, goods, services, and experiences”, and more about “how people, goods, services and experiences get to me” with profound implications for brands in this space. From declining High Streets to remote working, the shifts we observe are registered as much in culture, way of life and livelihood, as they are on the NASDAQ.

Interbrand’s Global Chief Strategy Officer, Manfredi Ricca, on the rapid evolution and burgeoning opportunity for brands competing in the Move Arena.

Context

As consumers move less, proximity matters more.

The Move Arena uniquely spans and connects individual choices to collective impact – from declining High Streets, to remote working, all the way a capital city’s reclaimed pedestrian zone.

At a time when individual consumers and businesses strive to make an impact, decisions about movement will make your brand part of wider conversations.

For instance, your local store isn’t just convenience or experience but, perhaps, belonging – the chance to be part of an investment in a community. Customers consistently rate H-E-B, a Texas grocer with little brand recognition outside its footprint, as a top US company*. Why? It considers itself a people business that happens to sell groceries.

How can your brand replicate that experience?

Context

Especially if you’re not a mobility brand.

Proximity and presence are integral parts of any business model. In the Decade of Possibility, new technology combined with evolving customer expectations (accelerated by the pandemic) presents opportunities for meaningful innovation.

‘Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass’ – the Louvre’s first virtual reality project – uses the latest scientific research on Leonardo da Vinci, his creative processes and his painting techniques. The experience gives you the chance to meet the woman in the painting face-to-face, and is billed as giving audiences a new way to engage with the world’s most famous painting on a more personal level.

Where does what you do meet your customers? How might that change next?

Context

How you move is an act of brand leadership.

The way brands move people, goods and services offers a crucial opportunity to change and grow their relationship with customers – from the presence they have in customers’ lives, to the choices they represent.

Your delivery fleet says more about you than your sustainability report. In 2021, Amazon announced an order of 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian.

Context

And a chance to shape relationships with the constituents that matter.

If moving goods and services is not at the heart of what you do, but is part of your service, look through the Move lens to inspire novel ways of segmenting your customer and employee base.

Provide each segment with an appropriate value exchange and combination of efficiency and closeness.

As an employer, the extent to which your employees move or don’t – through remote, in-person, and hybrid working arrangements – means that your brand’s employee experience will need to be engineered in different ways for different cohorts.

Context

Because how we move is how we live.

Companies competing in the Move Arena are not only helping us move from point A to point B, but they are helping us live.

They are helping us to create new experiences. And providing us new choices. To change the environments in which we live.

And in those changes, they create new ways for consumers to imagine their lives and themselves. Where their new life is a product of how they choose new ways to move through it.

Customer

The Five Consumer Signals Shaping the Move Arena

We spot the signals of changing customer expectation to help our clients stay ahead. How?

Our Arena Collectives are a global network of 150 culturally fluent experts, who are constantly sensing for Weak Signals of change. Our Heartbeat Team takes each Signal and explores it in depth with a community of 500 (extra)ordinary people from around the world to listen for the Truth in the noise. We use a host of tools, such as social listening and quantitative analysis, to assess the scale of these truths, and we work through the implications for brands. Here we explore the Weak Signals shaping change in Move.

Customer

The Five Consumer Signals Shaping the Move Arena

We spot the signals of changing customer expectation to help our clients stay ahead. How?

Our Arena Collectives are a global network of 150 culturally fluent experts, who are constantly sensing for Weak Signals of change. Our Heartbeat Team takes each Signal and explores it in depth with a community of 500 (extra)ordinary people from around the world to listen for the Truth in the noise. We use a host of tools, such as social listening and quantitative analysis, to assess the scale of these truths, and we work through the implications for brands. Here we explore the Weak Signals shaping change in Move.

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

Survival of the Simplest

A fight for, and a flight to, simplicity. Toward a more mindful approach to meeting people’s functional and emotional needs. Small wins over big ones.

READ MORE

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

Survival of the Simplest

A fight for, and a flight to, simplicity. Toward a more mindful approach to meeting people’s functional and emotional needs. Small wins over big ones.

READ MORE

Humanity in the Balance

A new “all in” mindset has risen, where every action, every move, and every moment is lived with conscience and purpose. 

READ MORE

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

Survival of the Simplest

A fight for, and a flight to, simplicity. Toward a more mindful approach to meeting people’s functional and emotional needs. Small wins over big ones.

READ MORE

Humanity in the Balance

A new “all in” mindset has risen, where every action, every move, and every moment is lived with conscience and purpose. 

READ MORE

Heightened Expectations

Moving from consumption to creation, what’s important isn’t “what do I get?” but “what do I create?” by choosing a certain brand.

READ MORE

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

Survival of the Simplest

A fight for, and a flight to, simplicity. Toward a more mindful approach to meeting people’s functional and emotional needs. Small wins over big ones.

READ MORE

Humanity in the Balance

A new “all in” mindset has risen, where every action, every move, and every moment is lived with conscience and purpose. 

READ MORE

Heightened Expectations

Moving from consumption to creation, what’s important isn’t “what do I get?” but “what do I create?” by choosing a certain brand.

READ MORE

A radically “new me”

A radical evaluation of how we choose to live combined with radically different ways to move about our daily lives.

We Before
Me

An important functional shift to “self-reliant interdependency”. Individual actions create a greater collective outcome AND a better individual result.

READ MORE

Survival of the Simplest

A fight for, and a flight to, simplicity. Toward a more mindful approach to meeting people’s functional and emotional needs. Small wins over big ones.

READ MORE

Humanity in the Balance

A new “all in” mindset has risen, where every action, every move, and every moment is lived with conscience and purpose. 

READ MORE

Heightened Expectations

Moving from consumption to creation, what’s important isn’t “what do I get?” but “what do I create?” by choosing a certain brand.

READ MORE

Heartbeat:

A radically ‘new me’

How we live is how we move.

How we live is how we move.

Companies competing in the Move Arena – i.e., those brands who are helping us travel, ship, drive, fly, deliver – are not only helping us move from point A to point B, but they are helping us live. To create new experiences. And providing us new choices. To change the environments in which we live. And in those changes, they create a “new me”. Where my new life is the product of how I choose new ways to move through it.

READ MORE

Which Weak Signals are most relevant to your brand?

Commentary

Market Intelligence

Insider View

AUTO

The opportunity for automotive brands to be more responsible and better integrated into our daily life; to reimagine product as part of a seamless and ecosystemic experience.

Max Raison, Strategy Director, Interbrand

Read more

Insider View

AIRLINE

Reimagining business class travel. The desire for experiential, with robust planning for immersive experiences, should feel exciting for the airline industry – it should create a real platform to differentiate what have become ‘sky coaches’ with passengers crammed into aircraft, to something much more fulfilling, immersive, and better yet, sustainable.

Ben Moncreiffe, Business Director, C Space

Read more

Insider View

LOGISTICS

How hyper-efficiency, convenience and innovative technology will shape the future of logistics.  

Joe Stubbs, VP, Brand and Marketing, Interbrand

Read more

Which unexpected players do you compete with?

Work

"Group of motion blurred, self absorbed people standing on escalator on their way to work. The composition is very simple and elegant, showing the clean lines of modern architecture found in new train stations and airports.You might also like:"

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Interbrand
Arenas

Culture evolves, customer expectation shifts.
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