War of Position: Strategic Principles for Transformative Brand Strategy
Summary. This blog sets out strategic principles for brands that want to ground their purpose in real structural change rather than surface‑level campaigns. Drawing on Gramsci’s idea of a war of position, it argues that brands should anchor their purpose in concrete shifts to their ownership structure, supply chains, labour practices and product design. As well as investing in cultural infrastructures that normalise climate and social justice. The blog ends with a call for brands to interrogate where they reproduce the logics they oppose and which damage their future, to support communities already shifting culture, and to work with us at strat4 on long‑term narrative, organisational and alliance strategies that will make a different common sense real and tangible in everyday life.
Translating war of position into brand strategy means re‑designing how purpose is conceived, resourced and measured. Here are some practical principles:
1. Anchor in structural commitments
Tie brand purpose to material changes in supply chains, ownership models, labour standards and product design, not only to messaging.
Use these commitments to contest core neoliberal assumptions – for example, that property must be privately owned, or that value equals shareholder return – by experimenting with commons‑based, cooperative or stakeholder models where possible.
2. Invest in cultural infrastructures
Support and collaborate with independent media, education projects and community organisations that are already working to shift norms on climate, care, housing, labour or democracy.
Co‑create tools, stories and formats that make alternative ways of living feel concrete and desirable, rather than purely sacrificial.
3. Play a long game with metrics
Complement sales and engagement metrics with indicators that track shifts in attitudes, practices and expectations among target audiences over time.
Accept periods of backlash and contestation as inherent to counter‑hegemonic work, using them to refine alignment between rhetoric and practice rather than retreating to safer terrain.
4. Build alliances, not empires
Enter movements as a participant, not a proprietor, recognising that legitimacy comes from aligning with, learning from and sometimes taking a back seat to communities on the frontline of struggle and inequality.
Use brand reach to amplify demands that exceed the firm’s immediate commercial interests – for example, stronger regulation, public ownership or rights‑based frameworks – rather than only advocating voluntary corporate self‑regulation.
If your brand’s purpose is more than a strapline, the next step is to start fighting a deliberate war of position in your own corner of civil society. That means treating your governance, supply chains, internal culture and communications as linked terrains where a different counter-hegemonic common sense about climate, care and justice can be made real, not just talked about.
Start by asking three questions:
Where does our current model quietly reproduce the very logics we say we oppose, and what structural commitments are we prepared to make instead?
Which movements, communities and independent institutions are already shifting culture in the directions we care about, and how can we support them on their terms?
How can we equip our own people – from frontline staff to senior leaders – to act as organic intellectuals, capable of translating everyday experience into compelling stories and demands of systemic change?
At strat4, this is precisely the work we do with clients: helping purpose‑driven organisations design long‑term narrative, organisational and alliance strategies inspired by Gramsci’s insights into war of position and hegmony. If you want to explore what a serious war of position might look like for your brand, get in touch and let’s map the terrain together.