Every brand is born free. That first moment when the (business) idea strikes, everything is clear. Why the business should exist, what it will do, how it will go about doing it… You don’t know everything but you feel good enough to take steps towards the vision.
You commit to it. You’re filled with confidence, vigour, curiosity. Every conversation, every news you read, every scroll on social media and every comment section shows you proof of why the idea is relevant and why the world needs this business to exist at this point in time. You even feel like destiny is calling.
You start bringing the idea to tangible form. Other people get involved. People who haven’t had the same life experiences as you, that led you to the idea. They start sharing their expert opinions as if you asked. Some offer compelling arguments to make sure you don’t get too hung up on the ideals, beliefs and values that you consider important. “Idealism is all good when you study philosophy but in the real world of business, one must compromise or die”, they say.
Little by little everything unique about your idea gets chipped away. It becomes more about what the data says, what the investors, cofounders, management team and all the other experts say or want. About what the competition is doing. How they’re faring. About what the algorithms want, about chasing trends, optimising for CAC, forever A/B testing everything, commercialising every interaction with a Call To Action. Always luring, nudging, reminding, incentivising.
The people you built the business for become ‘ideal customer profiles’ and ‘users’ you ‘acquire’ and extract ‘lifetime value’ from.
The brand becomes a machine, made to do all this to survive.
Forgettable, one out of many, a mere shadow of what you once envisioned.
And you wonder why people don’t relate. Why repeat customers are rare. Why you’re always incentivising. Isn’t being better than the competition enough?
The answers, it turns out, are simpler than the noise suggests.
To start with, broadly there are two approaches to business.
The first is to find the path of least friction, and solve the problem while staying within the boundaries set by the challenges, constraints and dynamics of the business. It’s the sensible path to take, and unless you’re super vigilant, you’ll find yourself following this approach without ever choosing to.
The second is to set aside everything you think you know (and others advise you) and study the problem afresh through primary research and genuine curiosity, until you know and see things you didn’t know or see before. It feels slow, wasteful, even insane. But once you’ve done it, the challenges transform into opportunities, the constraints stretch your creativity, and the market dynamics reveal the role your business plays in the big picture.
One of these is a regurgitation of best practices and what worked for others under other circumstances, pretending to be your strategy and asking for your adoption.
The other is strategy that’s original, born for your business and works without asking you to compromise everything you hold dear.