WTF is "Brand"
An attempt at answering marketing’s messiest question.
Hi friends 👋🏼 Over the weekend, Broadway News published a roundtable convo with a line up of big dogs from some of the top ad agencies in show business. It was, in a word: theater-marketing-nerd-heaven.
One word kept bubbling up: brand. My wise friend Ruthie even asked the question head-on — what does “brand” actually mean? — and, unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a definitive answer. How could there be? It’s a word that’s gotten fuzzy, stretched to cover identity, reputation, vibe, legacy, all at once.
So this is me sharing my (unsolicited) POV on it. Not to counter what was said, but to sharpen it. To tease apart brand (lowercase) from Brand (capital B), and show how the two feed each other across a single show, the Broadway industry, and the theaters down the block.
Let’s get into it.
Brand vs. brand
Here’s the simple(ish) frame I’ve landed on:
brand (lowercase): the artifacts—the tangible stuff you can point to. Posters, Playbills, logos, social posts, trailers, taglines, even the way a cast talks about a show.
Brand (capital B): the atmosphere—the bigger picture those artifacts create together. The vibe, the reputation, the fog you see all the stuff through.
Put enough artifacts into the world and they start to coagulate. That’s a fun word. A steady stream of small choices—made with consistency, tone, and repetition—inevitably builds an atmosphere. That’s when a lowercase brand tips into a capital-B Brand.
Once that atmosphere exists, it reframes how people interpret every artifact. A single social post gets subconsciously judged as “on brand” or “off brand.” And, for the people making the work, that atmosphere becomes the guide for what gets made next.
Which means the loop never stops: artifacts create atmosphere, and atmosphere reshapes how artifacts are seen and made. Every show, every theater, every institution is already inside this cycle. The real difference is whether you treat it as an accident—or as something you can shape with intention.
Brand vs. brand: in practice
For an individual show, the lowercase brand is the poster, the press release, the b-roll montage. Those artifacts add up until an atmosphere emerges (the capital-B Brand.) What’s changed in the last 5, 10, 15 years is who gets the biggest hand in setting that atmosphere. Paid ads and PR absolutely still matter, but social now has more real estate than ever. One post can shift perception faster than a full-page New York Times spread. That weight change means Brand is shaped more in real time, and way more publicly, than it used to be.
For a regional or community theater, the lowercase artifacts are humbler: a season brochure mailer, a poster in a coffee shop, a rehearsal pic on Facebook. But the loop is the same. Those pieces accumulate into an atmosphere that defines the theater’s role in the community—the family hub, the civic anchor, the experimental lab. Unlike Broadway, ownership here is usually concentrated: a single marketing manager or even the artistic director calling the shots. Which means the atmosphere can shift more quickly, but it also depends on very few hands.
For Broadway as a whole, the lowercase artifacts are scattered and collective: the glowing marquees, the Playbill collections, the theater outlets, the Tony broadcast, even the shorthand of “I saw a Broadway show.” Together they conjure the capital-B Brand: prestige, glamour, artistry—and cost. The tension here is that nobody owns it. The League, the press, the shows, the influencers, the tourists: everyone adds to the atmosphere, but no one’s in charge of it. Which is why Broadway’s Brand feels both entrenched and hard to shift. Everyone contributes, but no one’s steering.
Broadway: the bullseye
Broadway’s Brand isn’t a single picture. It’s easier to think of it as a target with three rings.
At the center: insiders. Artists, producers, marketers, press, superfans. For them, “Broadway” means auditions, press releases, casting rumors, which show is moving in next, the star that just signed on, and of course: grosses. The atmosphere is alive here, but it’s fleeting. Shows open and close, hype comes and goes, and the Brand is less polished and stable, more of a constant hum. The feeling we have day-to-day.
The middle ring: the adjacent crowd. New Yorkers who catch a show once or twice a season. Film and TV folks peeking over the fence. Aspiring artists staring at the “inner circle” they want into. Close enough to touch it, far enough for mystique. For them, Broadway stands for legitimacy. A place you bring visiting family; a professional milestone; a marker that something “counts.” Discount weeks, subway campaigns, morning-show performances tend to saturate here.
The outer ring is everyone else. Broadway equals Hamilton/Wicked/Phantom and the touring title that comes through town. What crosses this line are a few big artifacts: Tony moments, late-night performances, a viral clip, a marquee on a highway billboard. The picture that sticks is simple: special, polished, expensive.
And the rings don’t move together. Insiders feel the Brand shifting daily. The middle ring updates by season. The outer ring shifts only when a headline forces its way out. That’s why the macro Brand feels stuck—there’s a lag in what saturates. A casting announcement lights up the center; a viral TikTok might hop to Ring 2; a banger Tony performance can jump all three in one shot.
Plus, the mic keeps changing hands. Artists, critics, news outlets, daytime and late night shows, mega-producers, long-runners, and now influencers, fans, and creators. None of these control the whole picture, but they do subtly shift the wind. And leakage goes both ways: insider cynicism or delight now moves outward fast, and outer-ring stereotypes push inward as pressure to be shinier and safer. That tug shapes what gets greenlit.
This is all very heady, I know. But the takeaway is simple: every artifact from the inner ring—every post, every headline, every whisper—feeds the bigger picture. You won’t always see the ripple. But it’s there. And over time, those ripples decide what Broadway looks and feels like to the world.
So what does it all mean?
“brand” is the stuff. “Brand” is the atmosphere. One builds the other, and the loop never stops. That’s true for a Broadway show, a regional theater, a local bagel shop—and also for you.
Because plot twist: you are a Brand. The way you say hi in the hallway, the meme you drop in the group chat, how you talk to the grocery store cashier or flight attendant, the general vibe you give off when you’re hangry—those are all artifacts. Stack enough of them together and boom. Atmosphere. People start to carry around a mental version of you that may or may not match the one in your head. That’s your Brand. And it exists whether you want it to or not.
So here’s the invitation: start to be a little more conscious. Notice the stuff you’re putting out, the atmosphere it’s creating, and whether those two line up. You don’t have to curate every move. You don’t have to polish yourself into a billboard.
But the way you move through the world—how you show up, what you share, how you make people feel—that is the Brand people carry with them. And the kicker is: you don’t get to opt out. You already have a Brand. The only question is whether it reflects the story you meant to tell.
One last thing…
The news that Jimmy Kimmel has been “indefinitely” suspended is one more artifact tossed into the pile. On its own, it’s a nasty headline. An upsetting late-night shake-up. But in the fog of our current moment, it feels much heavier than that.
Because the lowercase brand of America is made up of artifacts like these. The speeches and press briefings. The cable news chyrons. Court rulings and dissenting opinions. The Super Bowl halftime show. A protest sign. A passport. Even the way a school lunch is served. Different administrations tilt the mix. Different networks spotlight different pieces. But together, they form the tangible stuff people point to when they try to understand this country.
And those artifacts build the capital-B Brand: the atmosphere of what America is supposed to stand for. Freedom of speech, democracy, equality, resilience—or, depending on the moment, censorship, fragility, hypocrisy, decline. The atmosphere shifts, and suddenly every new artifact is read through that fog. Everything become evidence. Proof of the story people already feel they’re living in.
No one owns the Brand of America. Presidents, press, corporations, celebrities, activists, everyday citizens—we all add artifacts to the air. Which is why it feels so messy, so contradictory, so complicated. Some pieces pull the Brand toward hope. Others tilt it toward cynicism. The loop never stops.
Which brings me back to Kimmel. His empty chair is a single artifact. But the reason it landed with a thud is because of the atmosphere we’re already in. One where free speech feels shakier, institutions feel less stable, and the Brand of America feels like it’s wobbling on its axis.
It’s hard right now. There’s a desire, in many of us, to affect change. And then there’s the sense of defeat when we remember we’re just one person. But maybe there’s power in that—in the artifacts we put into the atmosphere.
So that’s what I’m carrying with me. The hope that the small actions I take day to day—everything from the content I put out into the world to the way I treat someone trying to squeeze into an already overstuffed subway car—can move the needle ever so slightly toward optimism. Toward courage. Toward Love.
See you next week ♥️
—Matt