In traditional media, since a-brand-is-consensus, there was a high degree of focus on “controlling the narrative”. In a society with high information asymmetry, it was possible to position yourself as mediators of credibility that people had to trust.

With the rise of networked communications, brands have to content with direct p2p information and identity. Overall consumer sentiment ripples through the network quickly because the-marginal-cost-to-distribute-is-low, especially on attention-maximizing networks like Twitter and Instagram.

This means that brands are “headless”. Headless Brands operate on permissionless and distributed consensus on what the brand means. Operators of Headless Brands align around their personal narratives and create their own spheres of influence for the brand.

Decentralized branding is facilitated by users truly empowered to create their own narrative, and incentivized to spread it.

Similarly, a-decentralized-brand-is-a-meme.