People are looking to brands for the sense of belonging, identity, and meaning that we used to look to religion for. But today’s brands have not stepped up to meet that demand, and largely continue to just focus on selling goods.

There is a huge opportunity for brands to move beyond commerce, merge with culture, and become social networks.

This is the future @slow_rodeo is building towards, and they’ve been calling them Full Stack Brands. I like that.

With the cost of content and software creation trending to zero, increasingly useful open social graphs and protocols, and the new value capturing properties of tokens, these brands will be able to serve their communities in shockingly expansive ways, and be more valuable than the brands that have come before.

The dominant brands of the future will be conglomerations of culture-infused social networks, banks, production houses, product studios, fashion houses, etc. All bundled together in a way that uniquely serves their type of person.

Trad brands will not be able to compete with the sense of belonging that Full Stack Brands will provide.