Aligning your brand honestly

The search for values within the performance of social media.

It's been over thirty years since I started my career in advertising. At first, I didn't even talk about branding. Or for that matter, insights and human behavior. But I’ve come to realize that everything about this industry rests on a fragile foundation. Our understanding of people.

Every brand strategy, positioning statement, campaign idea or creative leap begins with that simple pursuit. What do people believe? What do they value? What motivates them?

For most of my career, I was able to find that answer in the culture itself. In the stories people told, the causes they rallied around, the ways they expressed who they were. That’s where we, as creatives and brand strategists, have always gone searching for truth. But lately, I’ve started to question whether the cutural mirror we’re looking into still reflects anything real.

Social media was once a fascinating window into human behavior. But now it has become a hall of mirrors. A freak show. It reveals amplified versions of ourselves, polished and polarized. Outrage becomes identity. Empathy becomes performance. And meaning itself begins to feel more manufactured than discovered.

That realization has changed how I think about brands. Because if our work begins with culture, and culture itself is distorted, how do we build anything authentic on top of that?

A New Way of Seeing: The Two Moral Planes of Meaning

Along the way, I came across an idea that helped me make sense of what I was feeling. It was articulated by ethicist David Gushee, as referenced in a recent HuffPost article exploring cultural polarization. Gushee draws a distinction between two directions of morality shaping how people think and act. Vertical and horizontal.

Vertical morality is about duty, conviction, and loyalty to something greater, like a cause, an ideal, or a higher truth. Horizontal morality on the otheerhand, is about care, connection, and fairness among people, peers, and communities.

For most of modern history, culture found its balance between those two planes. But now, the equilibrium has cracked. We live in a moment where both moral directions are pulling strongly against each other, sometimes into parody. And the digital world has learned to manipulate and monetize that tension. The result is a society, and a marketplace, that rewards the loudest expression rather than the most grounded one. And brands are often allowing this sense of morality to supercede common values that typically align customers and form community.

To help illustrate the concept of morality, let's look at some brands that clearly align with one axis or the other.

The Vertical Fire

When Nike launched its 2018 campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, it wasn’t simply chasing a trend or reacting to politics or current events. It was actually following a belief that had been designed into its DNA since the beginning. The campaign read, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

I remember watching the reaction unfold in real time. People burned their shoes. Others cheered. And yet, through the noise, I could feel something true. Nike was reasserting its values. Its morality. Reminding us that courage is sacred, and conviction matters. That’s the language of vertical morality. The call to rise above, to commit, and to take risks.

It was polarizing, yes. But it was also deeply aligned. You could sense that Nike wasn’t pretending. It was living out its own mythology.

The Horizontal Flame

Then there’s Airbnb. This is a company that, in many ways, has built its brand squarely on the other moral plane. Its “We Accept” campaign wasn’t a demand for allegiance. It was an invitation to belong. A reminder that humanity itself is the shared ground beneath us.

That’s the essence of horizontal morality. Things like empathy, connection, inclusion. It feels softer, but it can be just as radical. When done honestly, it expands the circle of belonging.

But even this type of morality comes with tension. As Airbnb grew, its promise of community began to collide with the realities of scale. Housing concerns, regulatory pushback, profit pressure. The moral warmth that built it became harder to sustain.

And that’s really the challenge of the horizontal. it thrives on closeness, and closeness is hard to keep when success creates distance.

When Brands Fake Morality It Shows.

Remember Pepsi’s protest ad? You know, the one where Kendall Jenner solved social unrest with a can of soda. This campaign wasn’t offensive because of what it said. It was offensive because of what it pretended to understand.

Pepsi borrowed the look of conviction and the sound of empathy, but it had none of the substance behind either. The brand tried to merge both moral planes (the power of protest and the comfort of connection) into a single performance. Unfortunately, it failed because it confused meaning with mimicry, and settled for  the appearance of morality rather than the practice of it.

What This Taught Me About Soul and Strategy

I think it's fair to say that every brand lives somewhere between these two forces. the vertical pull of belief and the horizontal pull of belonging. Great brands find a way to integrate them, to stand for something while still standing with people.

That balance won't come from market research alone. It comes from empathy. From patience. From the brand's willingness to look past the performance of social media and to listen again for what’s real.

That, to me, is where the next era of brand strategy must live. Not just in the metrics of engagement, but in the deeper work of meaning.It’s what inspired me to start SoulFire — a practice built on the belief that science and story, truth and empathy, conviction and connection all belong to the same flame.

Because the world doesn’t need brands that burn brighter than people.It needs brands that burn with them.