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The Business of Aspiration: How Social, Cultural, and Environmental Capital Changes Brands
The Business of Aspiration is about how consumers' shifting status symbols affect business and brand strategy. These changing status symbols, like taste, aesthetic innovation, curation or environmentalism create the modern aspirational economy.
In the traditional economy, consumers signaled their status through collecting commodities, Instagram followers, airline miles, and busy back-to-back schedules. By contrast, in the aspirational economy, consumers increasingly convey status through collecting knowledge, taste, micro-communities, and influence. This new capital changes the way businesses and entire markets operate, and yet the modern aspirational economy is still an under-explored area in business and culture. The Business of Aspiration changes that.
In this book, marketers will find examples, analyses and tools on how brands can successfully grow in the modern aspirational economy. The Business of Aspiration answers questions like, what is good for my brand long-term?, how is this business decision going to impact our culture? or what are the main objectives of our growth? Marketers will learn to shift their brand narrative and competitive strategy, to create and distribute new brand symbols, and to ensure that their brand's products and services create both monetary and social value.
In the traditional economy, consumers signaled their status through collecting commodities, Instagram followers, airline miles, and busy back-to-back schedules. By contrast, in the aspirational economy, consumers increasingly convey status through collecting knowledge, taste, micro-communities, and influence. This new capital changes the way businesses and entire markets operate, and yet the modern aspirational economy is still an under-explored area in business and culture. The Business of Aspiration changes that.
In this book, marketers will find examples, analyses and tools on how brands can successfully grow in the modern aspirational economy. The Business of Aspiration answers questions like, what is good for my brand long-term?, how is this business decision going to impact our culture? or what are the main objectives of our growth? Marketers will learn to shift their brand narrative and competitive strategy, to create and distribute new brand symbols, and to ensure that their brand's products and services create both monetary and social value.
94 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2020
42 people are currently reading
540 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 28, 2021
"In this crisis, the creative class, not billionaires, leads the way."
Anyone working with advertising, culture, creativity, or owning a business - this is your hidden treasure! I could go on and on, summarizing, quoting, and talking about this book, but here is just a short glimpse into what I thought was "a hidden treasure."
This book is, hands down, one of the best, most refreshing, and relevant work-related books I have ever read about modern culture, aspiring living, and how brands can tap into the changing lifestyles.
The author, Ana Andjelic did a phenomenal job: the book is well structured, researched, thought through, and makes a strong point. It explores topics such as social influence, communities, curation, and taste and serves them with confidence that it is hard not to agree! It is full of great insights, too, as well as real-life-and-brands examples, and not only I marked almost everything, but I also folded literally the corner of almost every page. It is a book that won't be hidden away - I'll use it a lot.
No blah blah here, no usual marketing bulls*it, it is an academic work not to miss!
Few notes:
- Don't get shocked by the price (I did initially), yet once I decided to invest and read it, I can guarantee that the value I got is more substantial than from four average workbooks that everyone reads ( and those that make to bestsellers lists).
- A few times exact quote or even the same fact appears in text, once even on the same page twice. Not sure how editors could miss this, but it felt like a bizarre repetitive mistake to leave in a book.
Otherwise, so good, I will get a second copy without all my notes and folded corners.
Anyone working with advertising, culture, creativity, or owning a business - this is your hidden treasure! I could go on and on, summarizing, quoting, and talking about this book, but here is just a short glimpse into what I thought was "a hidden treasure."
This book is, hands down, one of the best, most refreshing, and relevant work-related books I have ever read about modern culture, aspiring living, and how brands can tap into the changing lifestyles.
The author, Ana Andjelic did a phenomenal job: the book is well structured, researched, thought through, and makes a strong point. It explores topics such as social influence, communities, curation, and taste and serves them with confidence that it is hard not to agree! It is full of great insights, too, as well as real-life-and-brands examples, and not only I marked almost everything, but I also folded literally the corner of almost every page. It is a book that won't be hidden away - I'll use it a lot.
No blah blah here, no usual marketing bulls*it, it is an academic work not to miss!
Few notes:
- Don't get shocked by the price (I did initially), yet once I decided to invest and read it, I can guarantee that the value I got is more substantial than from four average workbooks that everyone reads ( and those that make to bestsellers lists).
- A few times exact quote or even the same fact appears in text, once even on the same page twice. Not sure how editors could miss this, but it felt like a bizarre repetitive mistake to leave in a book.
Otherwise, so good, I will get a second copy without all my notes and folded corners.
April 20, 2025
This book is not a marketing book, it’s a sociological study disguised with business terms. It shows how brands now operate as mobile cultural institutions, creating micro-identities, rituals, and tribes where the product is merely a narrative vehicle.
It exposes how the real value of a brand today doesn’t lie in what it sells, but in what it represents.
I particularly appreciated Andjelic’s take on how taste has emerged as the new currency in the social influence economy. In a world where wealth can be easily staged, “modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having the taste to know what to buy.”
Lastly, the most powerful thing about this book is how it names what you’ve always felt but never quite articulated. It takes these subtle unspoken dynamics and holds them up to the light.
It exposes how the real value of a brand today doesn’t lie in what it sells, but in what it represents.
I particularly appreciated Andjelic’s take on how taste has emerged as the new currency in the social influence economy. In a world where wealth can be easily staged, “modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having the taste to know what to buy.”
Lastly, the most powerful thing about this book is how it names what you’ve always felt but never quite articulated. It takes these subtle unspoken dynamics and holds them up to the light.
February 15, 2023
Pretty amazing and brief book about "the water we swim in," it gives voice to many aspects of our culture that are otherwise unsaid, with a focus on branding during and after COVID and the decline of DTC. Most of the book is "dang this is really articulating a lot of what I didn't realize or couldn't quite explain" and some of it is "this doesn't make sense and would benefit from further elaboration." Andjelic has richly referenced other texts and content in her bibliographies for each chapter which is an awesome resource. Generally the book is a case study in how to read trends by focusing on 2021. The specific values it speaks to are transient but the greater thesis around brand building, evolution, and collective behavior is not.
Couple key ideas:
- status via access to niche information has replaced status via wealth
- desirability of products has decoupled from price, now predicated on social capital
- communities dictate values and taste, nobody does in isolation; target collectives not individuals
- to hack growth, hack culture: root brand in subculture/niche or capture a zeitgeist (take existing movement)
- hack initial following, then emphasize social activity among it
- brand is constantly evolving with the currents of culture/collectives
- "To answer the question of how to get something to res-onate with the atmosphere of the times, we should look for contradictions, inversions, oddities, and coincidences in our culture, society, and economy."
Couple key ideas:
- status via access to niche information has replaced status via wealth
- desirability of products has decoupled from price, now predicated on social capital
- communities dictate values and taste, nobody does in isolation; target collectives not individuals
- to hack growth, hack culture: root brand in subculture/niche or capture a zeitgeist (take existing movement)
- hack initial following, then emphasize social activity among it
- brand is constantly evolving with the currents of culture/collectives
- "To answer the question of how to get something to res-onate with the atmosphere of the times, we should look for contradictions, inversions, oddities, and coincidences in our culture, society, and economy."
December 9, 2021
Brilliant, unique thinking about how brands can lead
An incredible adept and widely informed mind combined with a fireworks vocabulary give us an exhilarating tour of the modern brand landscape. It’s a throw down challenge to do more than just sell more. Read it. Then read it again. Then click all the links at the end of the chapters (Thank you!).
Read it before your competition does.
An incredible adept and widely informed mind combined with a fireworks vocabulary give us an exhilarating tour of the modern brand landscape. It’s a throw down challenge to do more than just sell more. Read it. Then read it again. Then click all the links at the end of the chapters (Thank you!).
Read it before your competition does.
August 27, 2021
“All brands have to add responsibility, generosity, and social improvement to both their products and their actions”. This statement summarizes all of the analysis from brand communications during the COVID pandemic that is in this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 22, 2025
I learned more in the short book than I did in my four years of undergraduate. It’s straight-forward & written more as an academic paper (SO many direct takeaways). I’ll recommend as long as the impact of COVID on consumer behavior remains.
February 11, 2022
A MUST-READ for all brand strategists out there. Sharp, insightful, cultural and full of great examples.
February 1, 2023
A must read for everyone working with branding and business. I also strongly recommend her substack Sociology of Business.
July 25, 2023
"Modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having the taste to know what to buy"
Read
September 11, 2024This was unreadable. It desperately needs an editor.
June 23, 2025
enjoyed.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews