In recent decades, the traditional approach to commerce has been defined by the formula “product + marketing = sales.”
Today, most expert advice on marketing and sales is becoming less effective for creators, companies at various stages of growth, and international brands.
Even with clear progress in tools, the approach often remains the same — fragmented and based on superficial methods of stimulating demand. Marketing is reduced to creating content and maintaining a presence on social media, working with visuals and advertising content in hopes of “hitting the algorithms.” But these actions are not connected to the product, channels, or the structure of choice. This is exactly what makes such efforts short-lived.
Today, a revision of the very logic of commerce is needed: from the mechanics of “selling” to a system of behavior.
This article is not a “trend review” but an attempt to call things by their proper names. Let’s look at why classic approaches are losing their effectiveness, what the new culture of commerce is, and what an effective system looks like for brands of any scale
Contents:
Why Today It’s More Important to Talk About Commerce Than Marketing: Historical Facts and Research
Marketing, as a discipline supporting sales, took shape during the era of mass production, when the main task was to stand out and deliver information about the product to the widest possible audience.
As early as the mid-20th century, Theodore Levitt wrote about the difference between sales and marketing, emphasizing that “people don’t buy drills—they need holes in the wall.” But even this was not enough.
In practice, this led to a race for attention and the creation of images—packaging, advertising campaigns, brand stories, one-off promotions.
*Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has shown that sustainable brand growth is achieved not through creative campaigns or loyalty, but through constant market presence, mass distribution, and a recognizable product presentation architecture. Loyalty is a result, not a cause.
Byron Sharp, “How Brands Grow”, 2010
So why do some brands remain on the market and grow steadily, while others—even with great products—lose customers?
Because they rely only on marketing!
- Consumers in Europe and the US do not distinguish one brand’s promotions from another’s (Ipsos reports). 85% of marketing assets have no clear link to the brand—and therefore do not work.
- Approximately 76% of new FMCG products disappear from shelves within the first year, according to Nielsen’s Breakthrough Innovation Report: less than a quarter of new products achieve sustainable sales.
- Only 15% of purchasing decisions are made consciously; the rest happen automatically, through familiar scenarios (Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011).
This clearly demonstrates: focusing on visuals and promo campaigns without commercial architecture—the ability to build systems of “recognition”—is wasted money and leads to empty results!
The reason is not “advertising” or even the budget, but the fact that most companies have aimed to “sell” rather than build long-term value.
The real issue is chaotic business behavior: there is no alignment between the product, communications, points of sale, and the customer’s decision-making scenario.
How the New Culture of Commerce Works
Let’s start with the concept of commerce.
Commerce is not just a set of marketing tools, but a structural system in which the product, distribution channels, presentation format, and team behavior are combined into a single architecture.
Classic marketing focuses on communications and engagement, but modern commerce requires:
- Real value: the product solves a problem, not just promises change
- Integration of product, channels, and service scenarios into a unified logic of choice
- Predictability: a structure that the customer can easily recognize and repeat
Formula of Commerce:
Commerce = Product + Presentation + Channels + Pricing + Customer Action + Repeatability + Profitability
Business Practice:
P&G Case at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025
P&G is an example of a company operating within the logic of the new culture of commerce, openly stating: focus on consistency and coherence is not a creative weakness, but the foundation of effectiveness.
- Recognition is built through repetition.
Repetition of advertising imagery and product presentation increases memorability and reduces the costs of new explanations. This lowers the cost of reaching the audience. - Consistency in communication increases effectiveness.
When advertising, packaging, and points of sale follow the same logic, it increases both conversion and loyalty. - Changing the image or presentation without reason is a risk of losing recognition.
P&G does not strive for constant novelty. On the contrary, it maintains familiar brand behavior patterns, which leads to stable sales. - Commercial effect comes not from “creativity” but from the structure of presentation.
Not emotions, but structural coherence of all brand elements—from appearance to price and team behavior—delivers financial results.
Commercial success is built not on a campaign, but on a system.
Repetition, consistency, and recognizable presentation are the main capital of a brand, especially in an oversaturated market.
🔹 What do they do differently?
– They do not aim to “refresh” the brand every season
– They maintain the structure of presentation: the same visual codes, messages, packaging forms
– They use the same advertising logic for years (for example, Always, Ariel, Pampers)
🔹 What does this achieve?
– Recognition grows not due to reach, but due to repetition
– Repeat purchases are higher—thanks to trust in predictability
– Marketing costs decrease, while effectiveness increases
🔍 This is not about uniqueness. This is the architecture of behavior:
– product + format + presentation + purchase scenario
– consistency in channels and visuals
– stable price and frequency of presence
📌 Conclusion for all levels of business:
Even global brands benefit not from “novelty” in presentation, but from a clear, repeatable, recognizable architecture of choice. What you do regularly builds trust.
This is modern commerce—behavior, not just campaigns.
Yes, today it is still about production, sales, and purchasing. But the conditions have changed: information overload, rapidly growing competition, and the devaluation of attention, as well as shifts in influence—TikTokers can set trends and have a stronger impact on the market than global brands. Singers and celebrities can launch lines of cosmetics, drinks, clothing, and more, but still not achieve success in these areas.
In these conditions, the definition of commerce expands—as a new culture of business management.
The new culture of commerce is a system for managing a brand’s commercial behavior, based on a precise structure of presentation, consistency of actions, and managing customer attention in a saturated market.
Not through marketing. Through actions, behavior, and the quality of contact.
And it already includes:
- Brand and product architecture
- Presentation as a system of choice
- Brand behavior as part of culture
This approach requires a different logic: the work of the brand becomes not a reaction to demand and not a search for the next way to stand out, but the implementation of a managed, repeatable system—where the company’s behavior is transparent, decisions are clear, and trust is built not by words, but by actions.
What Does the New Culture of Commerce Include as a System
🔹1. Brand Commercial System
🔹2. Presentation and Representation
🔹3. Cultural and Semantic Weight
🔹4. Professional Maturity of the Brand
🔹5. Ethics and Rejection of Manipulation
🔹6. New Role of the Entrepreneur
🔹7. Commercial Efficiency and Manageability
🔹8. Consistency Across Brand Levels
🔹9. Behavior as a Brand Asset
🔹10. Reproducibility and Scale
The new culture of commerce works like a constructor: it brings all the elements together into a single system, creates a connection between behavior, presentation, and the scenario of commercial choice in any environment.
📍What has changed (fundamentally):
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| The seller “pushes” the product | The buyer chooses themselves—based on a structure they understand |
| Packaging and advertising as the focus | The entire presentation system: from website to communication style |
| Emotions and “made with soul” as a trick | Recognizable structure + behavioral logic |
| Manipulation and information noise | Simplified path to choice and trust |
| Goal — quick sale | Goal — long-term choice and repetition |
❗Why Is This Specifically Commercial Activity, Not a “Marketing Concept”
| Criterion | Marketing Concept | New Culture of Commerce |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Influence perception to sell | Restructure the mechanism of choice and exchange |
| Scale | Communications and channels | Product + structure + logic of action + sustainability |
| Scope | Subsystem of the business | Model of all commercial activity |
| Task | Attract, convince, sell | Structure, simplify choice, reproduce income |
| Center | Customer’s attention and emotions | Behavior + structure of presentation + repeatability of choice |
| Methods | Advertising, content, images | Infrastructure of presentation, architecture of trust, format integration |
| Foundation | Behavioral psychology + creativity | Neuromarketing + consumer psychology + systemic UX behavior + historical-cultural code |
📌 Therefore:
The new culture of commerce is the logic of conducting commercial activity.
It requires businesses to go beyond marketing tactics and build a fundamental system capable of withstanding market changes, social media noise, and the shifting behavior of customers.
Behavioral Architecture of the Brand as the Foundation of the New Commerce
Today, a brand is assessed in reports as an intangible asset. My area of work is managing this asset at the behavioral level.
Through my proprietary Brâme™ method, I design how the brand behaves and interacts with the customer in reality: in conversation, on the shelf, on the website, in packaging, in instructions, in the voice of the salesperson.
The Brâme method, based on neuromarketing, consumer behavior data, and historical analysis, is built on four pillars:
- Product as the foundation — a real advantage proven by actions, not just words
- Architecture of presentation — a format that can be repeated and scaled
- Touchpoint map — the logic of interaction at every point of choice: from the store to the website
- Commercial behavior scenarios — how the team acts in typical and crisis situations
At the core of the method is not a belief in “values” or “stories,” but a verifiable system that supports growth in any market conditions.
Business Practice:
How the method works in the case of a coffee shop on the French Riviera
Cultural brand code: How historical memory builds trust
How This Works in Practice:
- Physical environment (retail space, packaging, atmosphere)
- Team behavior (communication, service, rhythm of action)
- Online presentation structure (website, product pages, interface, phrasing)
- Micro-experience (how the customer moves from “I see” to “I decide”)
🧼 1. Physical environment as communication
- Cleanliness, order, lighting, scent, and sound — are not about aesthetics—they are signals of safety and trust.
- The storefront, display, packaging, shelf — all of these are the stage of perception. If it’s not arranged, it’s unreadable.
- Tidiness or sloppiness of the space — is part of the presentation, even if you are “not about style.”
→ Everything a person sees and feels tells them whether they can relax here and make a choice.
👩💼 2. The salesperson as part of the brand, not just a function
- A salesperson is not just a service provider, but a carrier of culture: how they speak, how they look, what they say.
- No scripts or fakeness. There is contact, respect, and clarity.
- In the new culture of commerce, the salesperson doesn’t just “serve”—they create trust and guidance.
→ People read not words, but intonation, behavior, and atmosphere.
🔁 3. Consistency and rhythm
- How quickly they respond, how the order is processed, how returns are handled—that is the product.
- If the visuals are premium, but the product arrives in a crumpled bag—the system breaks down.
- Repetition of details is the key to trust: if it’s clean today, it’s clean tomorrow—this becomes culture.
→ Commerce is sequence of actions, not creativity.
📦 4. The customer’s micro-experience as the brand’s main “message”
- The brand is not just visual design!
- The brand is how the customer feels in the process: from visiting the website to payment and delivery.
- If a person doesn’t know what to do, where to click, where to go—the system doesn’t work.
→ Commerce is convenience + respect + clarity.
Behavioral stage is more important than formal positioning — because people choose not by slogan, but by recognizable logic.” (Kapferer J.-N., 2012)
Practical Conclusions and Recommendations
- Build a system, not just communications:
Storefront design, stories, and promotions are supporting tools, not the core of brand growth. - Invest in the architecture of choice:
The easier it is for the customer to repeat their buying path, the more sustainable the business becomes. - Use only proven mechanisms:
Focus on constant presence, recognizable logic, and mass distribution (Byron Sharp, 2010). - Diagnose your system by the 4 Brâme pillars:
Check: is everything in your business repeatable, reproducible, and clear?
Conclusion
Rethinking commerce does not require radical changes or abandoning marketing. It is already a higher standard of management—a transition from image to system architecture.
A systematic approach makes it possible to create brands that work at any level: from a craft workshop to an international corporation.
Next:
How to implement behavioral brand architecture—read here (link to practical guide).
The text contains references to the following sources:
- Byron Sharp. How Brands Grow. Oxford University Press, 2010.
- Kapferer, J.-N. (2012). The New Strategic Brand Management.
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.
- Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
- Nielsen Global New Product Innovation Report, 2014-2019.
- Ipsos Global Trends 2023.
- CCI France, 2023.
