Brands as a Tastemakers
Brands may appeal to time-conscious consumers and develop stronger emotional relationships with their audiences by curating products and experiences.
The experience of living through the Covid-19 pandemic has changed society's views of time and impacted daily routines in work, school, and social interactions. The Predictors are a psychographic group desiring stability and predictability as a result of a warped sense of time, emotional exhaustion, and uncertainty. Curation, or the act of selecting and selling items and experiences from a variety of brands or product lines, can provide concerned customers with a sense of confidence, connection, and optimization.
Brands are shifting their focus away from the value of newness, which refers to the ability to invest in existing products and services with new meaning and emotional value, to the value of curation, which refers to the ability to invest in existing products and services with new meaning and emotional value. To become curators, they will need to create their own aesthetics based on the principles they represent. This will be their guiding framework for forming new partnerships and collaborations with producers, designers, and creatives who share their values and place less emphasis on new items.
Curation strategies
Cross-brands collaboration
Partnering with competitor brands may seem counterintuitive, however by combining brand aesthetics under the guise of collaboration, brands can give life to unique limited-edition products to captivate consumers' interest. Key examples include the proposed McDonald's x Burger King McWhopper collaboration, or the Nike and Ben & Jerry's Chunky Dunky range of shoes and ice creams.
Nostalgia-based curating
Brands may harness the power of their archive by using nostalgia as a curatorial theme. Brands may develop curated and limited-edition collections by picking pieces from their past archive as trends like 1990s youth nostalgia and Y2K aesthetics continue to pique consumer interest, particularly among Gen Z. Ganni, a Danish fashion brand, chose 400 pieces from its archive for Ganni Postmodern, a limited-edition charity auction.
Curation by way of discovery
Brands may utilize their celebrity to promote and elevate other businesses and artists. The hero brand can choose and present talents from a variety of sectors to the public by offering a platform for rising potential. In the end, this creates interesting and exciting experiences for customers who can be inspired and motivated by discovering new creative and cultural influences.