Meaning Manages Value
- Abhijit Das
- May 26
- 5 min read
What businesses do and what they mean is the feeling curve brands must ride—all kinds—nation, corporate, product, personal. Debating whether the value of a brand’s lies in the promise or the product is the wrong question to ask. Question your framework which led you to ask that question.
As tectonic shifts reshape global power, traditional brand building becomes archaeological—digging up yesterday's solutions for tomorrow's problems. The careful sequence that built the 20th century—industrialize, democratize, brand, dominate—has shattered like a dropped iPhone screen. Still functional, but the cracks show everywhere.
The answer lies not in better positioning but in temporal architecture: building from the future backward. This isn't marketing. This is reality architecture.
Some of the frameworks in use are made for a different world.
Like the Maslow’s need hierarchy pyramid which was simply a misrepresentation. The pyramid wasn’t his doing. However much of the marketing wisdom floats around it.
I realized it when I was wandering on the streets of India to gather insights for launching an expensive alternative to the already successful TATA ACE for last-mile connectivity (Light Commercial Vehicle - LCV segment).
Traditional thinking made the LCV category appear purely functional and seem like there was no hope for a new entrant against TATA and Mahindra stronghold. The need in the segment was well-defined, well-understood and well-served as pure commerce—load capacity converted into return on investment-a simple math for fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
It wasn't easy to convince people against the Maslow's pyramid. Running around the streets and sweating it out in the boardroom did help warm them up to what the new product could mean to the people. Eventually, we launched Ashok Leyland DOST (‘Dost’ in Hindi means ‘Friend’) with the campaign tagline “Har Bojh Lagey Halka” (Every burden feels lighter).
MotorIndia celebrated its early success with the title “Golden run in debut year propels company sales growth”. (https://www.motorindiaonline.in/ashok-leyland-dost/)
What powered the penetration? Learning and exploiting the cultural role TATA ACE or Mahindra couldn’t play with the ROI math. Ashok Leyland DOST understood the need for respect over-and-above returns, taking the competition head-on.
Had we chosen not to challenge the traditional wisdom we wouldn't have reached where it is today - the No.2 player in the market aiming at 25% marketshare; growing the product portfolio beyond the 2-4T segment (250% of the overall LCV market.
Our strategic choice was same as it was for the consumer: ‘repeat the cycle’ or ‘write your own story’. And we bet on the latter.
Traditional minded marketers did warned that the approach wouldn’t work in a commodity business—utility trucks for bottom of the pyramid—and they were wrong.
The hierarchy of needs was an illusion, positioning "self-actualization" (an inherently Western, individualistic concept) as the universal peak of human aspiration, ignoring cultures that prioritize collective harmony, ancestral connection, or spiritual integration. The rigidity of the pyramid structure, which became the universal template for marketing strategies worldwide, embedded Western individualism into global consciousness.
This is a typical outcome when feelings are ignored for metrics and frameworks. Managing feelings is made to look deceptive and difficult.
Classic Marketing Funnel (AIDA and descendants):
Awareness → Interest → Desire → Action
Measured in conversions
Linear, gravity-driven
Present-tense mechanics
Classic Brand Funnel:
Awareness → Consideration → Preference → Loyalty → Advocacy
Measured in equity
Sequential relationship building
Past-to-present accumulation
Both assume time flows forward. Both treat humans as objects moving through predetermined paths towards convergence with consensus frameworks. We see these as archaeological artifacts—tools for a world that no longer exists.
Our funnels don't flow downward—they radiate outward from a future center.
Our Brand Worldview:
Worldview Foundation (Envision) → Worldview Expression (Embody) → Worldview Resonance (Echo)
Building VinFast's worldview foundation was another case in the same vein.
Rediscovering and elevating the meaning of being a Vietnamese was core to the strategy we crafted for its success. Vietnam faced a choice: remain the world's factory floor or claim a position in tomorrow's value chain. The VinFast project wasn't about making cars—it was about branding Vietnam as a nation capable of global innovation. The cars are merely proof points of a larger narrative transformation.
VinFast didn't market cars. We marketed Vietnam's industrial future with cars as proof point.
Yes, it was challenging the frameworks of those who preferred to looking at Vietnam in their rear view mirror. They asked "where we come from" (Past) while what they should have asked was "where we're going from” (Future).
Sometimes seeing patterns isn’t seeing the full picture at all until you question the narrative and break out from the frameworks of the past.
You know intuitively something is wrong with those frameworks but you'd bet on them anyway. Don't follow the frameworks. Follow your feelings and questions. We maintain our view from lived-experience - clarity could make any framework sing. However, thinking that the framework will take you to clarity, is failing to understand the point and purpose of the framework.
Future-down is now a necessity in a world where narrative creates capital flows, and capital flows create reality, branding the destination becomes essential to the journey.
Future-down isn't about predicting—it's about creating gravity. Brands don't come from the future. They create it. Marketing isn’t about moving people through stages but about creating temporal bridges.
We bet on this approach: Future Artifact → Present Evidence → Personal Revolution.
Consider this:
I. Emerging Markets Aren't "Emerging"—They're Leapfrogging.
E.g: India Stack: No banks → digital payments everywhere (PayTM).
II. Value Chain Realignment = Identity Assertion/Reappraisal.
E.g. “Made in Vietnam" can't follow "Made in Japan" playbook. (VinFast)
III. Bilateral Trade = Brand Battles. Trade agreements are cultural agreements. RCEP, CPTPP, USMCA aren't just tariffs—they're identity blocks. Nations must brand their value or become commodity suppliers. Future positioning determines present negotiations.
Saudi Arabia's NEOM: a $500 billion city that exists primarily as brand promise, architectural renders, and sovereign will. Traditional development would demand infrastructure first, narrative later. But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman understood something his predecessors didn't: in a world of compressed timelines and infinite capital seeking finite imagination, you must brand the future to build it.
Businesses chase value, yet value is not in numbers—it is in the meaning that people buy. Behind every purchase lies a choice, and behind every choice lies a belief, a desire, a story, a resonance, a purpose that goes beyond the transaction.
Meaning matters, because it defines value. Your brand is the meaning of your business.
Would you rather repeat the cycle or write your own story?
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