Imagine A Brand for Planet Earth

Imagine if planet earth had one brand. Imagine if we treated the world like one massive country and had a flag to represent it. One student from Sweden did just this and created a flag design with colors and symbols he strategically placed to covey the essence of earth. Why use a flag to capture this image? As Jay Cassano’s writes (and any vexillologist would support), “…no symbol is more powerful than national flags, which attempt to convey a shared culture, heritage, and way of life.” This concept of a world’s flag signals a bigger idea of a global brand.

Realistically one brand for the whole world to stand behind is highly unlikely. Creating this global brand would take a great deal of research and insights into answers those who, what, why questions. Who is the target audience? What need does a global brand fulfill? Why is this important?

As silly as the earth brand sounds, it’s not a completely alien idea. From one country’s brand to the local mom-and-pop shops or international fortune 500 companies, branding is an essential part of forming an identity. Everything around us has some level of branding — however strongly or weakly portrayed. Our global identity is an amalgamation of all the cultures that are vastly different from one another and yet identical in some of the most fundamental elements. If this cultural diversity and interconnectedness helps form our identity, then how would we describe our brand?

While having a world brand might not serve a measurable purpose, besides a feel-good global sense of unity, it’s interesting to imagine the possibility of telling the story of this planet and all the people (and things) inside it with one unified story.

(Photo: “Planet Sunset,” by Flickr user Kevin Dooley via Attribution 2.0 license)