Shifting Consumer Values and The 4S Framework for Brands

A significant cultural shift is underway in the Philippines and across Asia, where consumers are re-evaluating traditional notions of power and wealth. The once-dominant model of status – defined by visibility, hierarchy, and materialism – is losing its influence. Heightened public awareness of social justice, inequality, and corruption has led to increased scrutiny of ostentatious displays of wealth.

In response to this more socially conscious and skeptical marketplace, a new playbook for brands is required. This playbook is defined by the 4S Framework, which replaces the old model with four interrelated principles: Sense, Substance, Signal, and Subtlety. This framework guides marketers to build more meaningful connections by aligning with consumer values rooted in integrity, authenticity, and shared purpose.

Social media acts as a critical arena for this transformation, functioning as both a “megaphone and a watchdog” that holds brands accountable in real-time. In this environment, brands that demonstrate cultural awareness (Sense), operate with authenticity (Substance), enable value-based identity expression (Signal), and practice refined restraint (Subtlety) can build significant cultural capital, trust, and community loyalty. The era of loud logos is being replaced by a marketplace where mindful consumption and ethical meaning are the new currencies of influence.

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1. The Decline of Traditional Status Symbols and Flex

The established formula for brand aspiration and consumer status is becoming obsolete. For decades, status was successfully communicated through a “simple triangle of visibility, hierarchy, and materialism.” Brands thrived by selling aspiration via prominent logos, extravagant marketing, and engineered exclusivity. This model was amplified by social media, where ostentatious displays of wealth and inherited privilege became a routine strategy for gaining followers and engagement.

This approach is losing its effectiveness due to several key factors:

• Heightened Social Consciousness: Consumers, particularly in the Philippines, demonstrate an “all-time high” level of awareness regarding corruption, social justice, and inequality.
• Critical Scrutiny: Wealth and power, once “flaunted without question,” are now viewed through a more critical lens. The sources of luxury and comfort are no longer taken at face value.
• Shifting Values: Consumers are increasingly prioritizing integrity, fairness, and the true meaning of value over simple material excess. This signals a fundamental rethinking of how status is expressed and what people prize.

2. The 4S Framework: A New Playbook for Brands

To navigate this new landscape, brands must adopt a new model for connection. The 4S Framework provides a map for marketers, built on four core principles that resonate with the modern consumer’s mindset.

2.1 Sense: Cultural and Social Awareness

Marketers must now operate with the sensitivity of an anthropologist, attuned to the “moral soundscape” of the community. Consumers are hyper-aware of complex issues like inequality, corruption, and environmental harm.

• The Risk of Tone-Deafness: A brand that misreads cultural cues—such as posting cheerful promotions during a national tragedy or using colonial imagery—is perceived as tone-deaf. “Cancel culture” quickly turns these lapses into viral lessons, punishing not just the action but the character it reveals.
• The Mandate for Empathy: Brands must prove through concrete practices, not just slogans, that they understand and share the values of the communities they serve. This requires consistent and responsible action.
• Case Study: Pickup Coffee
  • This homegrown Filipino brand has successfully aligned cultural sensitivity with commercial strategy. It delivers on its promise of affordable, quality brews while building a narrative of ethical intent through direct farmer partnerships, an equal employment policy, and committed community engagement.

2.2 Substance: Authenticity and Transparency

In a marketplace shaped by a history of colonial mistrust and contemporary scandals, authenticity has become a “social contract.” Consumers view brand claims as part of a larger cultural performance and demand that words are backed by action.

• Transparency as a Baseline: Transparency is no longer a competitive advantage but a “cultural baseline.” The Filipino concept of kapwa (the shared self) is honored when a brand “walks the talk,” reinforcing collective trust.
• Advertising as Meaning-Making: From an anthropological perspective, advertising is a “ritual of meaning-making.” When a brand speaks, it signals its values and place in the moral economy, and consumers expect these signals to be verifiable.
• Case Study: SM Supermalls
  • Beyond its core retail business, SM has built a strong reputation for corporate social responsibility. Its large-scale donations and relief efforts during typhoons and other calamities demonstrate a level of commitment that transcends marketing spin.

2.3 Signal: Identity as a Cultural Statement

Consumer choice has evolved into a powerful form of social signaling. Purchases are no longer just transactions but “performances of moral identity” that communicate an individual’s values to the world.

• The New Prestige: Where status once relied on visible wealth, it now comes from values enacted through consumption. Buying from local artisans, choosing sustainable materials, or supporting social causes embeds the consumer in a “wider community of care.”
• From Objects to Relationships: The key insight for marketers is that “people are no longer buying objects to look successful; they are buying relationships that affirm their ethics.”
• Case Study: Anthill Fabric Gallery
  • This Cebu-based enterprise transforms upcycled fabrics from marginalized weavers into products that are statements of solidarity and ecological responsibility. Each piece tells a story of heritage, ethical labor, and environmental consciousness, offering a form of symbolic richness that a simple designer logo cannot match.

2.4 Subtlety: Quiet Power as Cultural Capital

Luxury is fundamentally about the “codes of distinction” that signal taste and moral positioning. In a society where social consciousness is prized, loud logos and ostentatious displays are increasingly seen as “culturally off-key.”

• Quiet Mastery: The new elite status is found in “quiet mastery”—demonstrated through superior craftsmanship, restraint, and the meaning embedded in an object’s story or creation process.
• The Risk of Overselling: Marketers must be sensitive to these shifting cultural signals. To oversell or rely on spectacle is to misread the audience.
• Case Study: Vania Romoff
  • The designer embodies this redefined prestige. Her minimalist silhouettes and “slow-fashion ethos” elevate the process of making over the spectacle of the brand, allowing quality and story to communicate value in an understated manner.

3. Social Media: The Megaphone and The Watchdog

Social media is the central arena where these cultural shifts are negotiated and amplified. It functions as both a “megaphone and a watchdog,” empowering consumers to hold brands publicly accountable in real-time. This dynamic can be understood through several anthropological concepts:

• Culture as Performance (Victor Turner): Every brand post, campaign, or influencer collaboration is a “performance” that audiences analyze for clues about a brand’s values and intentions.
• The Field of Contention (Pierre Bourdieu): The digital space is a “field” where different forms of “capital”—financial, social, cultural, and symbolic—are constantly displayed and contested. A user’s “habitus,” or ingrained disposition, determines what is seen as tasteful or tone-deaf.
• Actions that Reshape Norms (Sherry Ortner): Social media posts are not passive reflections of culture; they are actions that can actively “reinforce or quietly reshape social norms.”

For brands, this reality presents both high stakes and significant opportunities. A single misstep or hollow claim can become a viral liability. Conversely, brands that consistently embody the 4S principles can accrue capital far beyond sales, building invaluable trust, symbolic prestige, and lasting community loyalty.

This post was inspired by and based on a blogpost by Josiah and Chiqui Escareal Go:

More about Brand Failures:

Here is the transcript of the “The End of Flex Culture” video:

Have you felt it? That kind of subtle shift in your social media feed? You know, the really loud, in-your-face displays of wealth? They’re starting to feel, well, a little old, right? We are smack in the middle of a huge cultural shift in how we all see power and status. And for brands, that means the old rules just don’t work anymore. So let’s get into it and break down exactly what’s going on.So here’s the big question on everyone’s mind. Is flex culture actually on its way out? I mean, for years, social media was all about the spectacle. It was a race to see who could be the most over-the-top.And that whole formula of flashy posts, inherited money, and just tons of stuff, that’s what got you followers. But something’s definitely changed. People are paying way more attention now.And those posts that used to feel aspirational? Yeah, now they just feel kind of out of touch. And here’s why. The old rules of status are being completely torn up and rewritten from scratch.Think about it. Public awareness around things like social justice, inequality, and corruption is at an all-time high. So naturally, what it even means to have power and wealth is being seriously reevaluated.The game has totally changed, and a whole new playbook is emerging. Okay, so to really get where we’re going, we first have to look back at where we’ve been. For decades, status was built on this really simple, predictable model that brands and consumers just followed without even thinking about it.Let’s call it the old status triangle. I mean, just think about how simple this old formula was. It was all about three things.First, visibility. You had to be seen. Second, hierarchy.Making it crystal clear who was at the top of the pyramid. And third, materialism. Showing it all off with big logos, crazy extravagance, and a whole lot of exclusivity.Brands got really, really good at selling that dream. But here’s the thing about that old triangle. It’s not very stable.In the world we live in today, people care. And they care deeply about things like integrity, and fairness, and what something is really worth. We’re all looking behind the curtain now.And that purely materialistic approach? It’s losing its shine. And fast. So if that old, wobbly triangle is collapsing, what’s going to take its place? Well, something much more stable.Much more robust. This is the new playbook for brands that actually want to build real, meaningful connections in this more socially conscious world. We’re calling it the 4S Framework.So what does this shift actually look like? Well, we’re literally moving from that shaky, three-sided triangle to a solid, four-cornered square. Visibility gets upgraded to sense. Hierarchy is replaced by substance.Materialism evolves into signal. And then, we add a brand new, absolutely crucial element – subtlety. This isn’t just a new model, you guys.It’s a whole new way of thinking about what has value. Alright, that all sounds good in theory. But what do these four principles actually look like out in the real world? Let’s break down each of the four S’s – that’s sense, substance, signal, and subtlety – with some fantastic real-world examples.First up, we have sense. Now this is all about cultural and social awareness. The easiest way to think about it is a brand’s ability to just read the room.In a world that’s so aware of inequality and injustice, if a brand misreads the emotional pitch of its community, it just comes off as totally tone-deaf. And honestly, that can be a fatal mistake these days. You want to see a brand that totally gets sense? Look at Pick Up Coffee.They do more than just sell good, affordable coffee. They’ve woven themselves into the fabric of the community’s values through direct partnerships with farmers and real, genuine engagement. They understand the moral soundscape and they act on it.Okay, next up is substance. This is where authenticity stops being just a cool marketing word and starts becoming a real social contract. We as consumers now expect a brand’s claims to be backed up by actual, concrete, verifiable action.Empty words just break trust. Brands have got to, you know, walk the talk. I mean, take SM Supermalls.Their reputation for corporate social responsibility, especially with their huge relief efforts during natural disasters, is a masterclass in substance. This isn’t just marketing spin. It’s a real, verifiable commitment that builds this incredibly deep and lasting public trust.The third S is signal. And this one is so interesting. Today, what we buy is basically a way of telling the world who we are and what we believe in.Our choices are a performance of our moral identity. People aren’t just buying products anymore. We’re buying into relationships that confirm our ethics.Ant Hill Fabric Gallery is such a perfect example of this. They create products that are powerful signals. A bag made from their upcycled fabrics? It’s not just a bag.No way. It’s a statement about supporting local weavers, preserving heritage, and sustainability. And that story? That story is worth so much more than any designer logo.And finally, we have subtlety. In a world that really values social consciousness, loud logos and over-the-top displays can feel, well, kind of crude. The new elite status is all about quiet power.It’s found in craftsmanship, in restraint, and in the meaning behind a product, not the spectacle it creates. The designer Vanya Romov is a perfect example of this. Her brand just embodies this redefined prestige.The whole focus is on minimalist design and a slow fashion ethos. The quality, the story, and the purpose? They speak for themselves in this really understated way that resonates way more deeply than any loud branding ever could. So, let’s just do a super quick recap of all that.The Forest Playbook gives us sense to read the cultural room, substance to back up what you say with real action, signal to help people express their values, and subtlety to value craftsmanship over shouting with logos. This, right here, is the new foundation for brand value. So, what does this all mean for the future? Well, it means the stuff we value.You know, the actual currencies of the modern marketplace. They have fundamentally changed. And the key force driving all of this is, you guessed it, social media.It acts as both a megaphone and a watchdog. It gives consumers the power to hold brands accountable in real time, turning every single action into a public performance that gets judged on its values and its intentions. There’s nowhere to hide.And because of that intense scrutiny, the era of the loud, empty status symbol is pretty much over. The new currencies for brands are intangible. They are things like meaning, trust, symbolic prestige, and deep community loyalty.These are the assets that build real resilience and lasting value in the world today. Which really just leaves us with one final, and I think, really important question to think about. In this new era, where every choice we make is a statement, and every single purchase is a signal of our values, what do your choices signal about you?