Why the best brand strategy is deciding who you’ll disappoint

Every brand wants to be loved. That’s the problem.

Because a brand that tries to be loved by everyone ends up being remembered by no one.

I see it several times a week: a founder slides a brief across the table. The target audience is “everyone aged 18 to 65”. The brand should feel “premium but accessible”. “Bold but safe”. “Innovative but trusted.”

That’s not a strategy, that’s a wish list written by fear.

Who are you prepared to disappoint?

So that’s the question we ask instead.

As you can imagine, it’s not necessarily a crowd pleaser. Because nobody builds a business hoping to put people off. But every meaningful choice you make as a brand is also a rejection.

Choose a voice that’s warm and witty, and you’ll lose the people who wanted cool and serious. Choose to charge more, and you’ll lose people who shop on price. Choose a clear point of view, and someone, somewhere, will think you’re wrong.

That’s not failure, that’s actually the whole point.

Marmite understood this before any of us

The clearest brand strategy in Britain fits into four words: love it or hate it.

Marmite didn’t try to convince the haters. It invited them in on the joke. It turned disappointment into identity. If you love Marmite, you’re part of a club. And the club only means something because not everyone’s in it.

Patagonia did the same thing when it told people not to buy its jacket back in 2011. That campaign wasn’t for everyone. It was for the people who cared about what Patagonia cared about. Everyone else was free to shop elsewhere.

Brands with real pull all have one thing in common: they know exactly who they’re not for.

The rebrands that collapse make the opposite mistake

Look at the rebrands that get reversed within weeks. The pattern is almost always the same.

A brand disappoints the wrong people.

It trades away its most loyal fans for an imagined new audience that never quite shows up. The old fans feel betrayed. The new ones don’t notice. And the brand ends up standing awkwardly in the middle of nowhere, having disappointed everyone.

So before you write the brief, write the other list.

Who are you prepared to lose? And are you brave enough to let them go?

Because the brands that win aren’t the ones nobody dislikes. They’re the ones somebody loves.

And you can’t have one without the other.

—
Cat How is Founder and CCO at HOW+HOW