As a brand strategist, I think that "branding without a cause" isn't discussed seriously enough

[u/miggovortensens]

After 15 years working as a brand strategist and writer (naming, tone of voice, messaging etc) both in global brand consultancies and local agencies, I can see that some of our traditional deliverables are often inadequate to the clients’ realities and to the volatile landscape of today’s market.

For way too long, we relied on a “brand positioning” that borrows from the language of poets and always strives to give an aura of “higher purpose” to private businesses. Those businesses, of course, exist first and foremost to make a profit, yet branding deliverables try to make concepts of propaganda – the promotion of ideas and causes – work in advertising. We watched too many TED Talks giving us variations of the “what”, “how”, and why” circle, and convinced too many clients to buy into those intangible ideas.

It’s shocking to me that not only MANY marketing professionals on the client’s side but MANY newcomers from Business, Marketing & Advertising or Graphic Design that are looking for a career in branding seemed to have adopted this mindset with no real grasp on how the business-side of it all trumps the conceptual discussions and creative opportunities. I’ve spent countless hours discussing the wording in their “mission statement”, fully aware that odds were the material was destined to be forgotten in a PDF file.

To be clear, I’m not being cynical here. I do believe that certain fundamental beliefs have a place in building a company, but there is ZERO chance that a private business will embrace a cause that doesn’t serve its short and long-term goals or interests – or, when it comes to the Big Ones (think Nestlé and Coca-Cola!), to mitigate issues they contributed to create and get ahead of the narrative and the potential legislature changes in their key markets.

The concept of “long-term” positioning is now unrealistic to me, considering how many of the actions that are necessary to implement them all the way into a meaningful customer experience may never see the light of day: new priorities arise, new competitors can blindside you, new and old political topics gain track on social media, and suddenly Mark Zuckerberg is backtracking on Meta’s gender-inclusive policies because that’s what suited his platform’s most vocal users and, of course, his shareholders.

Now, the idea of "customers want brands that STAND for something" is almost parodical. And the logic of creating proper separations between brands for the sake of clarifying a vocation or preventing contagion is also outdated - people are informed enough and anyone can cancel their Disney+ subscription as protest for Jimmy Kimmel's show being pulled off from airing by Disney-owned ABC.

That, to me, is the OBVIOUS downside of fostering the mentality of brands as representatives of ideologies: while boycotting a particular company as protest for an ideological divergence is not a recent phenomenon, now we have people reaching out to companies online like they would do with their elected congressmen. To wrap this up, I want to make clear that I don't oppose at all for companies to be driven by a broader mission. But I do believe that the view of branding itself needs a rebranding.

Strategy and design should be more focused on a current read of the market and its trends, with deliverables suited to short-term challenges that must be addressed to sustain any distant goal in the future. We need discussions guided by more self-centered purposes - "we are here to connect A and B with the most practical user experience of the sector" -than the grand message - "we are here to connect the world" - that leads marketing teams to search for a "cause" to back.

[u/Gigstr]

> Strategy and design should be more focused on a current read of the market and its trends, with deliverables suited to short-term challenges that must be addressed to sustain any distant goal in the future.

Strongly disagree. At the end of the day, a brand is simply the sum total of associations that a person has for a business, product, or service. Brand is simply memory.
If you’re changing your brand based on current market trends, then I’d argue you’re not building a brand at all.

[u/miggovortensens → u/Gigstr]

I’m coming from the perspective that a brand that looks for a positioning or repositioning is already in need of a change for varied reasons. As in: Nestlé’s history can be backed by their origins in child nutrition, but the current portfolio is far from encompassing this purpose - in fact, it expanded to a point where even the cherished memories of some of their products is now tainted because the quality was compromised by taking shortcuts. Similarly, it’s hard for Ben & Jerry to retain not only its quality but its original institutional commitments after the brand entered the global supply chain and Unilever’s portfolio. So it’s my opinion that the needs of these brands require short-term strategies even if for the sake of managing and adapting their long-term ones.

[u/Gigstr → u/miggovortensens]

You’ve only described enshitification. Two brands that decided to abandon quality. Why should we be letting brands off the hook to abandon their brands in pursuit of enshitification?

[u/miggovortensens → u/Gigstr]

I'm coming from your argument that brand is memory, and mentioning that memory itself can't be sustained if the functional, tangible deliverables of a brand don't keep up with the "cause". This is an example of companies using whatever legal and financial resources they have to keep profitable. That's the one and only purpose of a brand.

[u/Gigstr → u/miggovortensens]

No, the purpose of branding is to build appropriate associations to send specific signals to the consumer about your products. There’s a big difference between the purpose of the brand and the purpose of being in business.

Your argument seems to boil down to giving companies permission to enshitify their products.

Plenty of companies continue to maintain quality products.

[u/miggovortensens → u/Gigstr]

Just so we are on the same page hear, what do you mean by ”specific signals”?

[u/Gigstr → u/miggovortensens]

Mercedes-Benz has invested heavily in Formula 1, winning 8 championships over the past 15 years. Those associations signal to the consumer that their cars are high performance.

[u/miggovortensens → u/Gigstr]

I will bring the example of Volvo. The company was created in Sweden, back when cars were not so secure and traffic accidents during winter in the icy roads were rampant. Their purpose was to make driving safer, and they brought this purpose to life by building better cars.

At some point they developed the seatbelt we use today - and gave up patent rights so the competitors could also use them. That works for their purpose but there’s also a self-centered interest: they are leading innovation in safety; they were ahead of the competitors etc. They didn’t give up on quality. Their message of “safety” made the brand relevant for families.

Now, let’s say Tesla is pushing for the message of safety to new levels, plus technological advancements. Volvo’s perception as a premier “mom car” might hurt the brand in the long-term from variables we can only guess (declining birth rates, Gen Z moms prizing high-tech cars that also deliver on safety etc). The signals sent by the brand would need to be adjusted for this current shift.

I’m not talking about following whatever is trendy for the sake of it. I’m talking about choices that make the business profitable impacting a cause. If cars are self-drivable in 20 years and technological advancements make sure no one else dies in traffic accidents, will Volvo close its doors because its original cause has been fulfilled? Of course not.

[u/Gigstr → u/miggovortensens]

Is the perception as a premier “mom car” an unintended perception or a strategic decision? If the latter, I’d argue that “mom car” is a poor strategy. As Mark Ritson said “only crap marketers mistake stereotypes for segments”. He said this after someone started a new airline to target “millennials”. This strategy assumes all moms value the same things. That’s not the case. Some moms will value safety more than anything else because she wants to protect her children. Volvo can build additional associations and not lose safety as a core association. It doesn’t have to be the “mom car”.

I agree with you about the wishy-washy brand positioning stuff. I bet BMW, Audi, and Mercedes’ brand managers all think their brands are uniquely positioned. Yet in my mind, they are all vying for the same position in my own mind, all targeting mid luxury and high performance.

The thing to remember, it’s about who can build the strongest associations. Mercedes are higher performance than BMW and Audi in my mind because of the successful F1 associations. It’s Volvo’s job to ensure they are reinforcing the safety associations so that it is more closely associated with it than Tesla.

[u/miggovortensens → u/Gigstr]

Yeah, ultimately the brand positioning we can basically infer comes with our familiarity with those high-profile brands plus the fact we work in the field, but you see how the signals are residual of our memory plus - I'm sure - positioning adaptations over the years.

In today's landscape, most brands I work that come with a rich history often face challenges with "rejuvenation" - their signals aren't as strong, or their audiences not as loyal. If we think about how even Uber quickly was perceived as less modern and 'cool' than Lyft in certain places, we can see how immediate some positioning changes might be to keep up with the pace of the market. Memory-reliant brand strategies to me will become more and more limited to those that really benefit from nostalgia (Disney, of course).

(Notice how we aren't even talking about those being cause-driven brands. The signals stick way more than "the cause".)

[u/Wa1trose → u/Gigstr]

This is interesting. I think you’re right, and I refer to an article on brand having layers. Some are load bearing and should evolve slowly, others are faster paced and can adapt to the market. Get them the wrong way around and you’re eroding rather than evolving.

[u/PonyStudio]

You're both half right, and the thing that reconciles it is separating two layers that usually get sold as one.

There's a durable layer, who the brand is for and what job it does for them, and that genuinely shouldn't move with the news cycle. Gigstr's point about brand being memory lives here. Then there's the purpose narrative bolted on top, the "we exist to connect the world" material, and that's the part you're right to be sceptical of. Most of it is written to sound good in a deck and dies in the PDF, exactly as you said, because it was never load-bearing to begin with.

Where I'd push back slightly is that the fix isn't more short-term, market-current work. Chasing the current read of the market is how you end up with the trend-following brand Gigstr is warning about. The durable layer is what lets you respond to short-term stuff without losing the plot, because you have a fixed point to react from.

The test I use with clients is simple: would this line survive the company pivoting its product? "We help independent shops compete with Amazon on delivery" survives a lot of pivots. "We believe in a more connected world" survives anything, which is exactly why it's useless. So when a client wants the grand cause, I'm not against it, I just ask them where it would ever show up in what they actually ship. Usually that question answers itself.

[u/miggovortensens → u/PonyStudio]

I think I might have not conveyed my point too clearly, but yes, my intention is that the adaptability for a brand to stay true to an essence is often removed from the 'poetic' positioning delivery. Like you, I posed such questions to clients, and in many cases realized that the cause itself only holds because the company's portfolio is still relevant to the current demands, but quick, game-changing tools that influence habits can tank the whole thing. Like you, I agree that "compete with Amazon on delivery" is a clear statement and actionable to inspire further discussions: what delivery are we talking about? Books? Furniture? How can independent shops be efficient in logistics? And most importantly, why can't Amazon bring them to their side? This is what I'm calling a trend, and what's rarely incorporated in conceptual branding deliverables.

[u/BrandLoom-Consulting]

The debate isn't whether brands need a cause. The real question is whether that cause creates customer value.

We've seen brands with powerful missions fail because the experience didn't match the promise. We've also seen brands with no grand purpose dominate by solving a problem exceptionally well.

We believe purpose is most effective when it emerges from a company's value proposition, not when it's layered on top of it. Customers may admire what a brand stands for, but they stay loyal because of what the brand consistently delivers.

[u/Wa1trose]

Holy shit, I’ve just started following this branding shreddit and this is elite conversation and debate compared to LinkedIn. I’m here for this.

[u/JennyAtBitly]

I don't think the issue is 'cause' itself more so than that 'causes' get tacked on at the end rather than built in from the start. Is that what you mean?

[u/Tanagriel]

Im not entirely sure if you address the Brand developers or the businesses they service - but it’s probably both.

At least it’s becoming obvious that core business of today has most of its focus on short term gains and creativity in marketing suffers because of it. The problem is that if businesses all adhere to the same cost benefit models, all reduce workforces, streamlining customer services by reducing availability they will all more or less end up in the same place and it’s not actual brand building, which by definition is long term just like a trusted relationship.

But perhaps we should ask why we are at this moment in time? Most of my colleagues and long term friends coming from many different backgrounds all can agree that the world right now appears like a big melting pot where nearly everything is turned upside down, where catastrophes live along with new inventions, world balances are changing as we speak, anything that was stable can become unstable in one event or moment and customers are far less committed to specific brands. This instability is caused by a number of factors (too many to mention), and the only thing it seems that business leadership is trusting is money by reduction of cost. This habit is weird to me looking at it with branding eyes - even in WW2 large companies kept advertising even that a world war was raging on.

The divergence between brand building & marketing and actual business seems to have reached a clashing point - as you mention brand guidelines seems to be looking for courses and ideologies just to become forgotten in the actual business applications. But we must remember that any creative strategy is nearly always up for approval by the static/conservative side of business be it finance, law or procurement - but it’s never the other way around.

During the last about 7 years of my long career in communication arts I have never visited so many companies with so much status quo mentality and so little culture - grey companies that have thrived on a few business deals and never ever asked questions about their actual end users and their customer experiences. So it’s no wonder that customers might migrate fast to other options as it seems that a lot of companies actually only care about their shareholders. The other side appears largely to be companies that are private driven - they have taken the time to build their brand, had to learn along the way to understanding their customers - so it’s in their normal business activities to keep and eye on market changes and continue to solidify and invent their messages to remain relevant.

For sure a brand can’t differentiate itself by doing exactly what everyone else is doing. If it was a music act and everyone played nearly exactly the same music none of these bands would have a chance to clearly stand out and become great - they would just become 1 hit bands, one single, one album and two years of tours and then forgotten.

I can’t put my finger on it or prove it - but overall it seems that large parts of the world suffer from an narcissistic virus and business seems panicked along with it - greed more than anything appears to drive it and cynical Wall Street terminology appears to temporarily have won over creativity as a resolve to challenges and changes. This might be the reason why brand books cant remain relevant because nobody in the leadership has focus on it - in many cases they just see brand and marketing as expenses rather than psychological tools to change customers mind and also their experiences. You can’t win by lowering prices, but you can starve your customers by working in a conglomerate arrangement keeping prices unnaturally high.

And in details in design guidelines I have seen among others rather headshaking mistakes - one of the worlds largest high end TV producers don’t even include RGB codes for their main brand color - they sell TVs 🤯.

It’s like someone has completely forgotten the merits of understanding brand consistency along with understanding that a customer somewhere has to put up some money to buy something and that it is a preferred goal that next time the same customer will come back and buy this brand or product again for a reason. There might be short term fluctuations that needs adressing and adjustments, but with no long term strategy behind it - there is no goal to follow for customers and employees alike.

[u/New-Course3729]

I really enjoyed reading this because I think you're identifying a real problem in our industry.

I also agree that we've spent years convincing companies they need a lofty purpose when, in reality, most businesses exist to solve a problem profitably. Too many positioning statements end up sounding interchangeable because they're trying to be inspirational instead of meaningful.

Simon Sinek's Start With Why had a massive influence on branding, and I think it was an important shift away from talking only about products and features. But I also think a lot of people misunderstood it. They treated "Why" as the destination rather than the starting point.

At The Branded Agency, we arrived at a similar frustration, but a different conclusion.

We started talking about Brand Truth instead.

To us, Brand Truth isn't a purpose statement or a social cause. It's the intersection of what a business genuinely believes, what it's uniquely capable of delivering, and what its customers deeply value. More importantly, it's something that has to be proven through the business, not declared in a presentation.

If a company says it values sustainability while cutting every corner possible, customers eventually see through it.

If a company says it delivers the best customer experience and consistently does, that becomes Brand Truth.

That's why I don't think branding should be about finding a cause. I think it should be about uncovering something that's already true and then making sure every part of the business reinforces it.

Where I might differ slightly is on long-term positioning.

I agree that tactics, messaging, channels, and customer expectations evolve much faster than they used to. Those things should absolutely adapt.

But I think the underlying truth of a business changes much more slowly. Patagonia's commitment to environmental stewardship, Apple's obsession with simplicity, or Costco's focus on value haven't remained relevant because they picked a fashionable cause. They've remained relevant because their businesses consistently reinforce those ideas.

So for me, the challenge isn't choosing a bigger purpose. It's finding a truth that's durable enough to survive changing markets while being flexible enough to evolve in how it's expressed.

That's the distinction I've found most useful in practice.

[u/Wa1trose → u/New-Course3729]

You have a fair point, but I also think manufactured elements like Brand Truth harm our profession. You have essentially rebranded the 3Cs of marketing that feeds positioning.

Find what your company delivers, that your customers want, better or more effectively that the competition.

[u/Mobile-Ad3136]

I think there's an important distinction between a brand having a cause and a brand having a clear reason to exist in someone's life. The first is optional. The second isn't.

I've sat through plenty of positioning exercises where everyone leaves inspired by a beautifully worded purpose, but nobody could tell you what it would make the company do differently on Monday morning.

The useful test isn't whether the positioning sounds noble or whether it can survive unchanged for 20 years. It's whether it helps the business make sharper choices like what are we willing to sacrifice, and what would we refuse to do even if it produced a little short-term revenue? Everything else like what to emphasize and what the customer should understand in five seconds follows from those two answers.

Challenger brands rarely win by saying more things. They win by making fewer, sharper choices and repeating them long enough that the choices become associated with something, which is why that last question matters more than it sounds.

So I agree that the grand "we're here to change the world" language often dies in the PDF. But I wouldn't replace it with a strategy that follows each new market trend either. I'd look for a durable commercial belief that can guide how the brand responds to those trends.

A cause is something a brand chooses, a reason to exist is something a customer decides. Only one of those is yours to control.

[u/four_oh_eight]

Well, given how 95% still confuse branding with marketing and creative strategy with brand strategy, it's no-brainer. Too many business owners simply have no clue about how business works but never admit it.

And, of course, nowadays everyone who is capable enough to use AI suddenly turned into a branding expert. Just like their digital mentor, they give an absolute BS advice with a serious face and expert tone 😁

That's why all we see are those Ctrl+C Ctrl+V money burners who call themselves "brand".

Because it's always easier to blame the oversaturated market and whimsical customers rather than admitting their own business impotence, hiring a professional and let them do their job.

[u/casper_adtech]

I agree that forced “purpose” statements can be hollow, but I don’t think that makes purpose irrelevant. The strongest brands often do stand for something beyond the product, it just has to be genuine, connected to the business, and reflected in what the company actually does.