In today’s marketplace, diversity has become a slogan and a resource for successful communication. It re-articulates the old concept of brand differentiation, defines inclusion policies, populates casting calls, and fills brand decks with a variety of faces and flags. Yet despite this explosion of representation, many advertising campaigns still fail to inspire genuine desire. They look acceptable, but they barely move anyone.
Why?
Because visibility alone doesn’t create fascination, wonder does.
This is where a new approach to exoticism reshapes brand thinking. Not the outdated version tied to colonial clichés or postcard fantasy, but the deeper phenomenon Gerald Mazzalovo explores in Exoticism, Brands & Society: Ethics and Aesthetics of Diversity: the moment when difference becomes emotionally charged — turning into curiosity, attraction, or identification.
Diversity Isn’t Desire — Yet
Diversity focuses on counting. Exoticism focuses on feeling.
A campaign can be diverse without being exotic. It can represent multiple identities without creating, emotion, tension, or mystery—the very elements that generate desire. Desire needs friction, mainly through transgression of taboos or mimetism It needs awareness of that delicate space between “what is mine” and “what is not.”
Exoticism begins precisely there:
- When audiences encounter something unfamiliar.
- When they sense a difference without immediately understanding it.
- When curiosity rises before interpretation closes the experience.
This emotional spark is what brands increasingly struggle to produce because too many narratives flatten difference into sameness.
The Process Of Generating Exoticism
Mazzalovo’s theory frames exoticism as a four-phase process:
- Difference exists — cultural, aesthetic, temporal, and social.
- Difference is perceived — it registers as unusual or unfamiliar.
- Difference is recognized — meaning is assigned through memory and culture.
- Difference is judged — leading to attraction, rejection, or indifference.
For brands, success lies in reaching phase four with a positive emotional charge — desire — without tipping into stereotype or appropriation.
The challenge is not to erase differences in the name of inclusivity, it’s to present difference in a way that preserves intrigue rather than neutralizing it.
Brands Representation of Exoticism
The book identifies several brand strategies:
- Staged exoticism — creating overt distance and spectacle. Think dreamlike travel ads, myths, or stylized cultural references. This is the case where the exotic difference is represented and universally perceived.
- Induced exoticism — subtle contrasts that play against the audience’s own cultural “base.” It is characterized by the need to have the viewer collaborate in the emergence of the meaning as the difference is between what is shown and the memorial and cultural base of the viewer. It is obviously subjective.
- Latent exoticism — difference embedded quietly into materials, craftsmanship, or atmospheres, stories rather than explicit visuals.
- Absent exoticism — campaigns fully anchored in familiarity and mimesis.
Modern luxury increasingly favors the induced and latent forms — avoiding theatrical clichés while retaining emotional depth. A whisper of otherness is often more powerful than a performance of it.
Desire Lives in Distance
Luxury’s oldest truth remains relevant: Desire lives in what cannot be fully possessed.
Exoticism protects that distance. It keeps the product slightly out of reach, symbolically, not just through price alone, but through meaning. Brands that erase mystery in favor of instant relatability sacrifice part of their emotional capacity.
This doesn’t mean returning to problematic fantasies. It means reframing the exotic as ethical wonder:
- Honoring difference without claiming it.
- Showing cultures as autonomous — not decorative.
- Creating fascination without flattening identities into commodities.
The Ethical Advantage
Modern audiences are not rejecting fascination. They are rejecting disrespect — the feeling that cultures are used rather than honored.
Brands that understand this new approach to exoticism succeed because they:
- Offer symbolic journeys, not caricatures.
- Curate authentic encounters instead of borrowed imagery.
- Allow space for unresolved meaning
Consumers may demand representation — but emotionally they still crave discovery.
From Political Diversity to Emotional Difference
“Diversity” operates at the level of politics and social justice — necessary, corrective, visible.
“Exoticism,” in its renewed sense, operates at the level of imagination — emotional, relational, aesthetic.
Great branding requires both:
- Diversity to ensure voices are present.
- Exoticism to ensure voices remain distinct and fascinating.
What Brands Can Learn
Desire doesn’t come from sameness — it comes from ethical distance.
The new exoticism teaches brands:
- Don’t neutralize difference — stage it with humility.
- Don’t turn diversity into comfort — allow discomfort to spark curiosity.
- Don’t explain everything — leave room for mystery.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to sell the “Other” — it is to invite wonder.
And in a world that increasingly feels predictable, wonder remains one of the most powerful assets any brand can cultivate.
Read Exoticism, Brands & Society: Ethics and Aesthetics of Diversity to learn more.
