North American: brands, advertising agencies, marketing professors, brand gurus, and celebrities have been most successful in dominating Global rankings. As a by-product of this, literature frequently refracts branding thought and practise through a English(US) and Christian lens, even if unintended. In this article, I highlight an optical phenomenon present and a rainbow of religious pluralism. My argument is that future competitive advantage will result from authentic brands that resonate with more of the attributes of different religions explicitly from guiding first principles. Furthermore, this has to be about appraising the implications of introducing different religions into branding as theory, as opposed to an upstream consumer targeting and advertising practise.

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Market
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Jonathan (Bilal)
A.J. Wilson
Academic Programme
Director, Postgraduate
suite in Marketing
University of Greenwich,
London UK
Editor: Journal of Islamic
Marketing
Brand Meaning
Arguably Corporate Brands are the most visible,
valu­able, ubiquitous and traceable element within a
macromarketing system. Furthermore, more recent
brand schools of thought posit that their strength and
equity has been increased through judging them as
empty formulae – that means that a brand is less about
a definition, and is more about a box or container in
which you bring together and place meaningful objects,
stories, artefacts, experiences, associations, and net-
works. Brands are anthropological economic exchang-
es, which generate wealth creation, social capital, and
resonance - beyond transactional osmotic economic
systems.
Death to the
Christian Brand
Hegemony?
North American: brands, advertising agencies, marketing
professors, brand gurus, and celebrities have been most
successful in dominating Global rankings. As a by-product
of this, literature frequently refracts branding thought
and practise through a English(US) and Christian lens,
even if unintended. In this article, I highlight an optical
phenomenon present and a rainbow of religious pluralism.
Key Take-homes
My argument is that future competitive advantage
will result from authentic brands that resonate with
more of the attributes of different religions explicitly
from guiding first principles.
Furthermore, this has to be about appraising the im­
plications of in­troducing different religions into brand­
ing as theory, as opposed to an upstream consumer
targeting and advertising practise. This is as a means to
understand the very human, precarious, and nuanced
nature of brand survival, beyond mere product and
service functionality. It’s about understanding human
nature, our reality, and that we don’t just humanize
brands – they make us more human.
In tandem, at the heart of this thinking and activity
is a movement towards a marketing approach that en-
gineers nodes and anchors that elevate symbiotic com-
munication linked to consumption-based experiences.
This Gestalt of the sacred, mundane, and the profane
capitalizes on the transient, and aspires for brand tran-
scendence. Brands are at the vanguard of extending
the life cycle of products and services; and in some
cases the mechanism for re-launching and stretching
retro and nostalgia offerings. On both a macro and mi-
cro level, these marketing activities are spearheaded
by design aesthetics, animism, anthropomorphism,
and the creation of branded cultural artefacts.
In addition, due to their nature, affects, and corporate
aspirations: the descriptors used frequently hold brands
analogously as being steeped in a religious meaning
and relevance - that either challenges or reinforces the
significance of the world’s major religions in connec-
tion with consumerism and consumption patterns.
Western Brand Superpowers
Notably, North American: brands, advertising agen-
cies, marketing professors, brand gurus, and celebri-
ties have been most successful in dominating Global
rankings. As a by-product of this, I argue that norma-
tive literature frequently refracts branding thought and
practise through a lens of blended American English
rhetoric and Western infused Christianity, even if un-
intended.
In response to these phenomena, and in light of the
fact that the majority of the world’s population are
not Christian, I’ve studied the implications of this
hege­monic paradigm. Keeping with the analogy of
an A­merican, Western, and Christian refracting lens:
an optical phenomenon exists, where this is a halo
and rainbow of religious pluralism also worthy of
investigation.
Furthermore, with the increase in offerings rendered
retro and nostalgic, due to continued and increasingly
rapid innovation; concepts and terms such as resur-
rection and reincarnation embody the analogous and
allegorical nature of branding as a religious pursuit.
The thrust of my argument is that if these phenom-
ena are left un-investigated and unchallenged, there

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lies the potential for a widening and foreboding gap:
(1) not only for aspiring brands hailing from ethnic
and non-Christian global majorities, inconspicuous by
their absence in rankings; but (2), also for monocultur-
al North American brands in an increasingly global-
ized, hybridized and connected world, where localized
cultural adaptations may lack sufficient, elasticity,
plasticity, latitude and authenticity.
In the interests of widening the knowledge base,
let’s consider other religions; and the suggestion that
future competitive advantage will result from authen-
tic brands that capitalize on and resonate with more
of the attributes of different religions and pluralism
- explicitly from guiding first principles.
In short, a brand’s focus for too long has been on the
creation of an iconic totem, rather than the imperma-
nence of faith, the rituals and worship of the faithful.
Globalization has made us tribal nomads, with liquid
possessions. Therefore the way that brands operate in
this new normal is through the reification of a gestalt of
quicksilver experiences, as a form of neo-spiritualism.
Learning from Plato
Plato argues that metaphysics accepts the division
of reality into the ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’. Therefore,
dialectic thought is both a type of reasoning and a
method of intuition. The literature points to human ex-
istence, that of brands and their management as being
understood according to a metaphysical standpoint.
Namely, that there are two fundamental questions:
what is there, and what is it like. These questions ap-
praise the interplay of existence, objects, space, time
and their respective properties – as means of under-
standing reality.
From this, I’m presenting the following stepwise
conceptual argument:
• Brands exhibit two overarching states of
existence, namely:
Transience: perishability, and lasting for a
short time
Transcendence: existence and experience
beyond a normal or physical level.
• They are therefore understood through the
consideration of each and the subsequent
reconciliation of both positions.
• These states of existence place them subject to
their cultural environment on a general level and
specifically managers.
• What remains unclear however, is to what degree
brands are material or spiritual - and therefore as
an extension, whether they are governed more by
intuition or reasoning.
Learning from Aristotle
The work of Aristotle, falls under the philosophi-
cal school of thought know as Neo-Platonism - that
considers the world-soul and phenomenal world. Ar-
istotle’s Categories is a text from Aristotle’s Organon,
which places all objects of human apprehension under
one of ten categories - known as the praedicamenta.
The Categories asserts that all possible kinds of
‘thing’ can be the:
• Subject: A person, thing or circumstance that is be-
ing discussed, described, or dealt with – giving rise
to a specified feeling, response, or action. It is the
central substance or core of a thing as opposed to
its attributes – about which the rest of a clause is
predicated.
• Predicate of a Proposition: Predicates are the part
of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stat-
ing something about the subject. Within the rules
of logic, this ascribes that something is affirmed or
denied concerning an argument of a proposition.
Propositions are a statement or assertion that both
expresses and demonstrates a judgment or opinion,
that logically expresses a concept that can be true
or false.
I argue that brands can be understood using this
approach, which I have mapped to Aristotle’s frame-
work, whilst harmonising existing schools of brand
thought, as follows:
Brand:
Anatomy,
Physiology
& Essence
Market
Proposition &
Stakeholder
Positioning
Brand-
Cultural
Paradigm
• Substances
• Quantities
• Qualification
& Qualities
• Relativity &
Relations
• Where?
• When?
• Being in a
Position
• Having
• Doing &
Action

3. The impact on today and tomorrow
The framing of brands according to a ‘West’, bound-
aried national identities, Marxism and capitalism pull
brand theory and religion into the hands of Europe
and North America. However, the major monotheistic
Abrahamic religions originate from the Middle East
and East Africa, and these regions’ influences seldom
feature in branding, other than according to consumer
consumption.
Furthermore, with 60% of the 7 billion world’s
population hailing from Asia, notably with Indonesia
being the most populous Muslim nation, alongside
other widely practiced religions throughout Asia, such
as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism; a similar
pattern is observed. In short, the majority of the world
draws from religious guiding principles that are under-
represented in brand theory development and practise.
Japan is an interesting case in practice, as one of
the few Eastern nations to feature in brand rankings.
They largely follow Buddhist and Shinto doctrines,
but brand strength is more likely to be attributed to
Japanese culture, with little mention of religion. More
recently, John Grant presents a treatise in which he ob-
serves a rise in an alternative anti-West, or alternative
to Western branding approaches. This he articulates is
non-Christian, shies away from the ego, and iconog-
raphy. Instead, for John and I, it appears to be more
compatible with the value systems of Islam, Bud-
dhism, and celebrating the craftsmanship of the artisan
in-tune with nature.
When considering this standpoint alongside my
model, I argue that the definition and purpose of a
brand is less about a restrictive definition according to
a name, logo, colour, and legally defensible position;
and more about the brand fulfilling the role of a Koan.
A Koan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used
in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of
logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment. In a
globalized age of social media, and promiscuous or
polytheistic branded consumption; due to increased
accessibility, product lines, and consumer spending
power especially in the East: my suggestion here is
that brands that elicit worship will be afforded greater
success where they draw from Eastern and pluralis-
tic principles of transcendence. Furthermore, with
increased economic migrancy, population growth,
education attainment, and wealth in the East, along-
side a rising interest in the role of faith in business and
marketing: the influences of the East will continue to
become more significant.
When reviewing a selection of tables and
secondary data, I found something that really
stood out - Western origin and controlled brands
and thought leaders dominate the rankings:
Interbrand Top 100
Global Brands
(Interbrand, 2014)
• The Americas = 56
• Europe = 33 (with only
1 in the top 10, No.10
Mercedes Benz)
• Asia Pacific = 11 (7
Japan, 3 South Korea,
1 China – with only
2 in the top 10: No.7
Samsung, Korea; and
No.8 Toyota, Japan).
THE WESTERN
BRAND
HEGEMONY
CoolBrands 2014/15
(CoolBrands, 2014)
72 Brands – all Western,
with the exception
of Sony Music, which
nevertheless is owned
and operated by Sony
Corporation of America,
a subsidiary of Sony
Corporation, Japan.
AdBrands
(AdBrands, 2014)
The top Consolidated
Agency Networks in
2013 by estimated
worldwide revenue
in the Top 20, that fall
outside the West:
• Dentsu, Japan No.3
• Hakuhodo, Japan
No.13
• Cheil, Korea No.18
2013-2018 Share
of Global Media
Advertising Spending
(Marketing Charts,
2014)
• 35.6% North America
• 27.9% Asia-Pacific
World’s Best Business
School Professors
(Poets and Quants, 2012)
Marketing takes numbers:
1, 2, 6, 16, 26, 27, 29, 34
- Two of who are ethnic
(Asian origin, North
American educated)
World’s Top 30 Brand
Professionals 2014
(Global Gurus, 2014)
Two of who are ethnic
(Asian origin, North
American educated)
Whilst religion is not necessarily linked to ethnicity, a cursory
glance at ethnicity yields interesting findings, which perhaps
indicate an appetite for a new world order:
Forbes
World’s most powerful celebrities:
• The top 10 are all North American
• 7 out of 10 are African American, and nominally Christian,
taking the top 4 spots.
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