Why category leaders in food, fashion and finance refuse to optimise away their weirdness — and what marketers can steal from them.
The brands we keep returning to as inspiration share one thing: a refusal to sand down the weird edges that made them lovable in the first place. Optimisation culture is the quiet enemy of memorable work.
"If your brand could be replaced by a competitor's logo without anyone noticing, the brief isn't the problem. The brand is."
Keep the herb. Keep the strange typographic choice. Keep the founder's voice in the script. Most categories don't need another safe player — they need a memorable one.
