The Reality of Brand Restlessness
There’s a human side to this, it’s what the psychologists Brickman and Campbell in the 1970s called the hedonic treadmill—the idea that regardless what happens to us, whether we break our legs or win the lottery, we eventually return to the same baseline level of discontentment. It makes sense that we all feel this way since our ancestors couldn't afford to be happy for too long. When you're happy, you stop moving, and you stop competing. So our brains are hardwired to keep running and looking out for something more.
When you zoom out to include your whole company, this means there are different stakeholders who are all feeling this compounded restlessness from different perspectives. It’s easy for execs to keep blaming the messengers, for marketers to protectively silo brand processes, and for organizations to churn through resources in an effort to satisfy the need to keep moving. And yet each time we sack the previous marketer or find a new competitor to emulate, the novelty fades and we need another hit.
There's no solution to the hedonic treadmill, but appreciating that it exists can be useful—after all, treadmills are in gyms so they must be heathy right?? There’s no way your branding will be perfect right out of the gate. It’ll never be perfect after any refresh. In fact it will never be perfect, ever.
But what about those amazing competitor brands that keep you up at night? They aren’t perfect either, but how'd they get so great? It’s a matter of positive iteration over time. Sure there are happy accidents where you stumble on an amazing image or phrase or symbol that resonates like crazy with your market, but really these cycles happen over years. You have an idea, develop it, test it, take feedback, and come up with refinements. There’s a real correlation between this business/market-based approach and the human reality of the hedonic treadmill.
Maybe we can call it the “empirical brand treadmill?” It’s the idea of embracing restlessness and imperfection while focusing on the biggest ideas you can come up with to make the smallest, most measurable improvements. Your most valuable team members become the ones who can push through the discomfort and make it through to the next upswing, regardless of the current state of your brand execution.
The secret sauce is honesty and flexibility around expression. Efficiency and consistency have their place in the operational side of production and testing, but the highest-level way to think about your brand is that it’s in a constant pattern of highs and lows, and with each uncomfortable cycle revealing more genuine truth of what you’re all about.
If reading this gave you any feelings, reach out. We love to chat about cringey brands!
