Never Mind the Corporate Bollocks
Somewhere along the way, ‘branding’ stopped being about making your company recognisable and started being about producing documents nobody reads.
These days, every business seems to believe they must have 60-page brand guidelines, a sweeping mission statement, a purpose, pillars, archetypes, personas, tone of voice; the whole shebang.
Half the time, the result is a thesaurus-fuelled soup of clichés. ‘Innovative’, ‘bold’, ‘world-class’, ‘customer-centric’, ‘purpose-driven’, ‘authentic’. It all sounds impressive, but none of it gives anyone a real reason to choose you.
No customer has ever picked a company because its brand book said it ‘empowers stakeholders to achieve excellence’.
A clear, usable brand guide is useful. Consistent colours, logos, typography, tone-of-voice; that all matters. But a 90-page ‘visual identity system’ that nobody outside the marketing team understands isn’t adding value, it’s just adding weight. The bigger and vaguer it gets, the less it actually helps.
The same goes for values. If they aren’t lived day to day, they’re just wallpaper. Employees roll their eyes, customers don’t care, and the money spent writing them could have gone into better service or better creative output.
Yes, we’re a design and branding agency. We could sell you a bloated brand bible and a shiny mission statement; plenty do. But we’d rather be straight with you: most companies don’t need it.
What we see far too often is businesses spending a fortune on a ‘strategic brand refresh’, only to then try and save money when it comes to actually putting it into practice. The brochures get cobbled together in Canva, the social posts are rushed out, and the website slowly drifts away from whatever was originally agreed.
Consistency and impact disappear almost immediately.
You’d be far better off putting that budget into ongoing, high-quality design and marketing; the things your customers actually see, the things that shape their perception, and ultimately, the things that make you money.
Because what really influences people isn’t a document, it’s what they experience.
It’s how you show up.
It’s the quality of your work.
It’s what other people say about you.
Real testimonials and case studies will always carry more weight than anything dreamt up in a workshop.
So before you invest in another document, ask yourself whether it’s actually going to change anything, or whether it’s just going to sit on a server somewhere while the real work gets diluted over time.
Strong brands aren’t built in workshops or PDFs. They’re built through consistent, visible, well-executed work that people recognise and remember.
