Big Questions With BFO:

Join Steve Krull and Dr. Marcus Collins in another Big Questions With BFO shot at Digital Summit Minneapolis 2025!

Dr. Collins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan, shares his expert perspective on the most critical trends shaping the digital marketing in 2025 and beyond. If you love all things brand, this interview is for you!

In this interview, we get into:

• The Power of Brand Over Performance: Why marketers are finally realizing that brand meaning—what a brand represents in the minds of people—is the ultimate driver of long-term success.
• The Future of Marketing: How brand will evolve from an identity mark to a community mark, helping people find and connect with others who share their beliefs.
• A New Approach to Growth: The one question Dr. Collins wishes he was asked more often—how can we better serve people? He argues that brands that focus on contributing to people's lives, rather than just selling products, are the ones that will truly thrive.

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Video Transcription

Steve Krull:

Dr. Marcus Collins, clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, following his incredible keynote presentation at Digital Summit Minneapolis, and he's agreed to answer my three questions today.

Dr. Marcus Collins:

Let's do it.

Steve Krull:

Ready to dance?

Dr. Marcus Collins:

Let's do it.

Steve Krull:

What do you think is the coolest thing happening in marketing today?

Dr. Marcus Collins:

I think that marketers are starting to realize that while performance is important, brand is first and understanding that it doesn't matter how good our products are, they're mostly parodied in the minds of people and while we may be able to perform well, our long term time horizon as a company is based upon the meanings that the brands have in the minds of people and their willingness to continue to come back because of what those meanings reflect within them.

Steve Krull:

That's awesome. I love the way you talk about how it's the, it's our market that actually puts meaning to our products and thinking about how we miss that all the time. I can't move off on tangents, which I'm prone to do because I said it's only 3 questions. So question number 2, what will marketing look like in 5 years?

Dr. Marcus Collins:

You know, it's hard to say. I think that, you know, anyone who could project that far out is probably full of crap. Truly. You know, I'm not clairvoyant, but I would say this, I think that, you know, the brands that are most powerful today are the brands that people use as identity marks as ways to project who they are in the world because of the means that those brands hold in the minds of people and what people want to project about themselves.

I would arguably say that the future of brand would be community marks. There are ways by which people are able to identify people like themselves because of their shared beliefs, especially in a world where there's more fragmentation than ever before, the more fractioning of the population, finding our people becomes more of a challenge, and our consumption become ways by which we signal to the world who we are and therefore ways which are be able to find people like me and be in community with them as well.

Steve Krull:

And when you answered a question on stage, you talked about Reddit and finding that community on Reddit. I find the same exact thing because that Reddit community, we don't know who they are because everybody's an anonymous Reddit handle and the fact that every forum is policed.

Dr. Marcus Collins:

That's right. 

Steve Krull:

It goes up or down based on how you're contributing to the forum and the conversation and it's absolutely amazing.

Dr. Marcus Collins:

That's right, the moderators are cleaning the data for you. Like what a better place to observe cultural practice than Reddit. Good night. Like it's happening there and it's being nurtured and curated for you.

Steve Krull:

So Marcus, final question. What's one question you wish someone had asked but has not?

Dr. Marcus Collins:

I wish someone would ask me. How might we better serve people? I think that I'm always asked, how do we grow? How do we scale? How do we sell more? How do we, you know, increase our profit margins? How do we do better research as opposed to like, how do we help people?

I think that when it comes to humanity, we're sort of bound by this, this implied obligation to reciprocity. That when people help us, when people give to us, we're more inclined to give back to them. And when brands who try to anthropomorphize themselves to be human - this is how you engage. You be human by contributing to the network of people as opposed to taking it. I wish more people asked, how do we serve?

Steve Krull:

Awesome, awesome. How do people find you on the interwebs?

Dr. Marcus Collins:

I am across the web at Mark to the C, M A R C T O T H E C (@MarcToTheC), or you could find me under Doctor Marcus Collins.

Steve Krull:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Marcus Collins:

Appreciate you.