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?
