When you look at the top-performing, strongest brands, what do you notice?
Most people see a slick brand with powerful messaging and consistent marketing.
What you don’t notice, but absolutely should emulate, are the constant micro changes they make as they experiment, test, and evolve their brand every single day.
Just like in nature, this is how brands grow, evolve, and thrive. And just like in nature, if you’re not evolving… then what are you doing? Our cousins, the Neanderthals, have the answer.
Brand strategy and creative direction aren’t one-time investments.
I once believed this myself. I thought, what I do (brand strategy and creative direction, for those who don’t know me) isn’t a full-time job. Maybe that was true once, like when Paul Rand worked with IBM in the 1950s. I did the math, that was ~75 years ago.
Yet today, so many CEOs still treat brand strategy and creative direction as a one-off expense or something to be outsourced at the start of a project.
This mindset leads to the opposite of growth.
It causes the brand to lag far behind the business, requiring a massive investment just to catch up. That kind of reactive fix might make sense in the short term, but the brands that consistently win? They don’t aim to align the brand with current reality. They aim to align it with aspiration.
That’s why you need a sustained commitment to brand strategy and creative direction.
You must constantly make micro changes based on the scientific method: research, theorize, experiment, observe, assess, and repeat.
This doesn’t mean there won’t be major investment milestones in a brand’s evolution; those are necessary, too. But it does mean you’ll stay relevant, spot major shifts sooner, and improve your marketing performance every step of the way.
If you have high-growth aspirations, there is no other way.
