Every brand evolution project has someone like you. The fearless voice who pipes up a few minutes into the kickoff meeting and, without warning, drops the b-word.
“Our brand needs to be…bold!” A few seconds of reverent silence tend to follow, broken only by the faint sound of your colleagues agreeing. Yes, their bobbing heads concur. Bold.
That desire is entirely understandable. Your team is investing their time and the company’s resources to improve your brand and help it stand out. Why not go big?
A brand refresh is also a big moment for folks like you on a personal level. A project like this doesn’t come around that often. It’s a chance to put your fingerprints on something that will have an impact for years—perhaps outlasting your tenure at the company, even your career. Why not shoot your shot?
It’s the right instinct. And it gets everyone in the room energized about the new brand’s possibilities. But all too often, as the project progresses and other voices weigh in, reality takes hold.
The objections start small. That accent color really pops, but it could be a little bright for our industry.
Over time, the volume begins to rise. That imagery style is striking, but it might require a photo shoot.
Inevitably, the lawyers are invoked. That’s exactly the kind of message we need, but Legal may not be comfortable with it.
In many such projects, these observations lead to a series of concessions. The color palette is neutralized, imagery scales back to stock photos, and messaging becomes an echo of what’s been cleared in the past.
These moves seem small, but they add up. And once the edges are all sanded down, your once-courageous b-word becomes something more closely resembling the s-word. Safe.
Like your initial instincts at the kickoff, these moves also bear a certain logic. Taking a big swing on a brand comes with the possibility of glory, but it also carries risk. Every unconventional choice can spark fear that it won’t land, potentially threatening the years of influence you’ve cultivated, the role you’ve earned, even the career you’ve built.
So more often than not, safety prevails. But we’re here to tell you that it doesn’t have to.
As consultants and brand builders, we’re responsible for helping organizations like yours stand out and get noticed, of course. But truly effective brands fulfill an array of company objectives beyond sales alone. They also help repair reputations, vanquish competitive threats, and attract and retain talent. They honor the past while paving the way for the future.
Accomplishing all that does take boldness. But those larger long-term aims can’t be achieved by being different for difference’s sake. They require a strong strategic foundation that informs exactly how and where it makes sense to take risks—and having the rationale to explain why.
For folks like you, we find a path to boldness that fulfills your brand’s objectives while alleviating your fears. Our work identifies which risks are worth taking: the ones that will have the most clear and direct impact on fulfilling the needs of your business.
Unlike many in our field who incessantly insist on being called “creatives,” we ground our work in methodical decision making—not merely “what might be cool.” Trends die, while principles persist. Buzz fades; strategy lasts.
From the early stages of a brand project, our Brand Character exercises help our teams break down the dimensions of what an idea like boldness might mean to our work. Together, we explore spectrums of how the brand should think, behave, and interact with others. We make assessments and define foundational principles based on those decisions.
Those determinations help ensure that every move your brand makes, visually and verbally, is in service of our strategy. Each decision, from a secondary color to a supporting message, has a strong rationale behind it. So when the time comes to defend a choice, anyone on the team can do so with firm logic.
That’s how we create lasting change together. Not by avoiding risk, but facing it head on, with confidence in the strategy we’ve built.
Boldness takes many forms, it turns out. Some of it is seismic, but it’s often quite subtle. Let’s uncover the variety that best suits your future.
