Thinking a different way...
We often talk about brands as if they’re finished. Defined. Locked. Signed off in a set of guidelines. But brands aren’t static artefacts. They’re operating systems. And the most useful way to think about them isn’t as fixed documents – it’s as recipes.
A strong recipe isn’t random. It’s deliberate. It has a core set of ingredients chosen for a reason. Remove one of them and you don’t get variation – you get something fundamentally different.
The same is true of brands.
The essential ingredients
The strongest brands are clear on their essential ingredients:
Their positioning.
Their target audience.
Their point of view.
Their distinctive visual and verbal assets.
These aren’t decorative choices. They’re strategic decisions. They’re what make the brand recognisable, memorable and mentally available over time.
They are non-negotiable.
Consistency is commercial discipline
This is where many organisations get confused.
They treat brand guidelines as aesthetic rulebooks rather than strategic guardrails. As if consistency is about fonts and colour codes rather than reinforcing memory structures in the minds of customers.
But consistency isn’t creative stubbornness. It’s commercial discipline. Distinctive assets only work if they are used repeatedly and recognisably. Positioning only builds advantage if it is held over time.
You don’t casually swap out the core ingredients of a successful recipe every quarter.
Evolve the execution, protect the core
But here’s the nuance. Consistency does not mean stagnation. Markets evolve.
Audiences shift. Culture moves. And while your core ingredients should remain stable, how you apply them can – and should – adapt to context.
A good chef doesn’t rewrite the recipe every night. But they do taste as they go. They adjust temperature. They refine proportions. They respond to the quality of what’s in front of them, without abandoning the fundamentals that define the dish.
That’s the balance strong brands strike. When businesses (and their suppliers) understand the strategic foundations – the positioning and the distinctive assets that truly matter… they can execute with confidence. They know what must remain constant and where there is room to flex.
When they don’t, consistency becomes either rigidity or chaos.
You see it in endless redesigns. In nervous rebrands. In assets changed before they’ve had time to work.
The real risk isn’t change. It’s confusing evolution with reinvention.
Brands that grow are ruthless about protecting their core ingredients. They hold their positioning. They invest in their distinctive assets. They build memory structures patiently. And then they evolve the execution intelligently around that foundation.
The brands people love aren’t the ones that constantly reinvent themselves. They’re the ones that feel familiar, coherent and unmistakably themselves – year after year.
That familiarity isn’t accidental. It’s a strategy, consistently applied.
Jack Bulut, Head of Design & Delivery
