Branding: too often overlooked in disruptive innovation and social purpose arenas

Abstract Branding is critical to disruptive innovation and social purpose programs, both strategic arenas of contemporary and future concern. Despite the progress that has been made in the last three decades, establishing branding as an imperative for business strategy, the strategic relevance and practical impact of branding for these strategic arenas is often still underappreciated, underevaluated and underused in practice. In this commentary, I explain why branding is critical for the success of disruptive innovations and societal programs while arguing that branding academics and practitioners must remain or again become more outspoken advocates of branding. We need to communicate the conceptual and practical power of branding to the thought leaders outside of marketing, many of whom are academics in other fields, and we ought to do more to convince executives and practitioners of the mission-critical role of branding beyond marketing.