In Brief:

Most value propositions are too generic. They are written to explain what the company, brand, product, or service delivers. They should be written to win customer choice. The difference between those two things is costing more than most leadership teams realise.

Value propositions exist at many levels of a business. The brand promise. The product pitch. The service offer. The pricing rationale. Each one is an attempt to answer the same underlying question: why should someone choose this over everything else available to them?

You do not get chosen because you have a value proposition, of course. You get chosen because, in that moment, you are the most relevant option available. Those are not the same thing. And most value propositions are several layers of abstraction away from the second one.

The problem is not copywriting. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how value works.

Most companies treat value as a property of their product or service. Features deliver benefits. Benefits are valuable. Write it down clearly and the customer will understand why to choose you. This is logical. It is also how almost nobody actually decides.

Value is not a property of a product. In fact, there is no value inherent in anything you sell. Value is a subjective experience in the mind and body of a specific customer at a specific moment — entirely relative to what else is available. It’s relative to what that person is trying to achieve, what problems they want to solve, what pain to escape, and who they are trying to become. The same product can be highly valuable in one context and completely irrelevant in another, and for another person.

Which means a value proposition written and extracted from the product or service level is answering a question the customer is not asking. They are not asking what your product is. They are asking what it will do for them. They are asking: of everything available to me right now, which fits best? That requires a different kind of answer.

Here is where it gets expensive.

Most companies compete in markets where functional differences are shrinking. Same with experiences. Products converge. Features get copied. Experiences too (UX and Experience Design had a good run). Perceived value and relevance is the primary battleground. And perceived relevance is not about clarity of description — it is about fit. Does this feel like it was made for me and exactly my situation? Does it address what I actually care about, in the hierarchy I care about it?

Value propositions need to go far beyond the WHO and the WHAT. They need to include HOW, WHY, WHEN, and WHERE. Context matters.

Most value propositions fail this test. They are comprehensive when they should be specific. They speak to stated needs while missing the latent ones — the real motivation underneath the surface reason, the anxiety the purchase is quietly resolving, the identity signal the choice is sending.

The result is a proposition that nobody actively rejects and almost nobody finds compelling. It gets you into consideration without getting you chosen. In a competitive market, that is an expensive place to live.

No wonder so many value propositions are “good”, but not truly remarkable or worth sharing.

The deeper failure is not understanding how value stacks.

Customers experience value as a hierarchy. At the base is outcome value — does this deliver the outcome I want? The function, the emotion, the social status, and the transformation. Above that is experience value — is this easy, confidence-inspiring, frictionless? How is this experience more relevant?

This is where preference starts to form. And above that is “meaning value” — what does choosing this say about me? How does it connect to my deeper human needs and values?This is where premium pricing lives. And at the top, rarer but more powerful, is “identity transformation value” — does this help me become who I am trying to become?

Most value propositions compete entirely at the lower first level. They describe the ideal customer + outcome and stop. Which means they are fighting hardest on the dimension where differences are smallest — while leaving the levels where pricing power actually lives completely uncontested.

This is why we measure Proposition Fit™.

The question is not whether your value proposition is well written. It is whether it is winning decisions. Proposition Fit™ measures the six most important value drivers for your specific ICP — the factors actually operating in the decision, not the benefits you have chosen to communicate. Then it maps your current proposition against those drivers and identifies the gaps: where you are addressing something the customer does not weight heavily, where you are missing something they weight decisively, where a competitor is occupying territory you have left uncontested.

And that creates The Relevance Gap™ - the space that is costing you money.

The findings are almost always uncomfortable. Not because companies are doing something obviously wrong, but because the gaps are subtle enough to survive every internal review while remaining wide enough to materially affect commercial performance. A proposition that is ninety percent right can still lose the decision at the margin. And in competitive markets, the margin is where most of the available growth lives.

There is a version of this that shows up as a pricing problem. Margins are thin. Customers seem price-sensitive. The sales team lacks confidence. But the more likely explanation is that the value proposition is not making the case at the levels where pricing power is earned.

You cannot charge a premium for a proposition that reads like a product description. Premium pricing is a verdict — what happens when a customer believes the value they are receiving is sufficiently greater than the alternatives to justify the difference. That belief is built through relevance. Deep, specific, layered relevance to what the customer actually cares about.

Fix the proposition. The pricing follows.

To be provocative, I like to tell clients it’s never about price, it’s always about relevant value. It’s true enough to make people think.

Meeting expectations is nothing to write home about. The bar is already set high. But you need to go beyond. Which is why you are probably trying to win the choice of too many different segments and customer profiles. What is broad becomes weak.

The cost of a weak value proposition is not always visible in the obvious places. It is in the pricing power you never had. The frequency you never built. The customers who tried you once and found nothing to anchor their loyalty. The market position that feels solid until a more relevant competitor arrives.

You only get chosen when you are the most relevant option available. Not the most described. Not the most distributed. The most relevant. That is a precise standard — and meeting it requires understanding your customer at a depth most value propositions were never built to reach.

The gaps exist. They are measurable. And they are quietly costing.

Proposition Fit™ measures the distance between what your value proposition says and what your most important customers need to hear to choose you. The gap has a number. The number has a cost. To get a taste of it, email hello[at]originalminds.co

In Brief: The cultural moment is rewarding brands that look like they’ve stopped trying. Which creates a problem. Because the moment you try to stop trying, everyone can tell.

There is a memo going around marketing departments right now. It has different subject lines depending on the company, but the content is roughly the same. We need to be more authentic. More human. Less corporate. Have you seen what Duolingo is doing?

The memo is well-intentioned. It is also, in a quietly devastating way, proof that the company sending it has already missed the point.

Something real is happening in culture. A generation that has been algorithmically marketed to since adolescence has developed an almost clinical sensitivity to performed personality. They can feel the strategy session that produced the Instagram caption. They can sense the brand guidelines behind the tweet. They know, with uncomfortable precision, when a company is being spontaneous on purpose — and they find it roughly as convincing as a politician doing a shot of tequila at a campaign rally.

The brands breaking through are doing something that looks, from the outside, like they’ve simply stopped caring about any of this. Duolingo’s unhinged owl threatening users in comment sections. Scrub Daddy — a sponge, one of the least inherently interesting objects in domestic existence — commanding genuine cultural attention through content that appears to have been made by someone with absolutely nothing to lose. Liquid Death building a devoted following around canned water by being more committed to their own strangeness than any focus group could ever sanction.

These brands look like they’re winging it. They are not winging it. But here is where it gets complicated.

The paradox is this: the quality these brands are being rewarded for — the looseness, the confidence, the apparent indifference to approval — is precisely the quality that cannot be implemented as a strategy.

You cannot put “be more unpolished” on a brand roadmap. You cannot run a workshop on spontaneity. You cannot hire an agency to produce irreverence on a monthly retainer and expect it to land the way irreverence lands when it’s real. The committee that has spent three years softening every edge, qualifying every claim, and routing every piece of content through four layers of sign-off cannot simply decide to stop doing that and expect what comes out the other side to feel free.

It will feel like a committee pretending not to be a committee. Which is somehow worse than just being a committee.

This is the trap the memo sets. The senior leadership reads about Off-Script brands and concludes the answer is a tone of voice refresh, a new social media hire, a directive to “take more risks with content.” The team dutifully produces riskier content. Legal reviews the riskier content. Brand reviews the riskier content. The riskier content is made significantly less risky. It goes live. Nobody notices. The memo gets sent again six months later with a different subject line.

The output was never the problem. The output is just the symptom.

What the brands doing this well actually have is not a better content strategy. It is a more resolved sense of identity. They know, with unusual precision, who they are and who they are for. They have made the decision — consciously or by instinct — about which customers they are optimising for and which ones they are not. And that clarity, that genuine narrowness of focus, is what makes it possible to say the slightly wrong thing occasionally without it feeling like a crisis.

Duolingo is not nervous about alienating people who find their owl annoying. Those people are not their customer. Liquid Death is not worried about the consumers who find their brand too aggressive. Those consumers were never going to choose canned water with a death metal aesthetic anyway. The apparent recklessness of their communication is underwritten by a very clear decision about who they exist for — and an equally clear decision about who they don’t.

That is not a communications strategy. That is an identity strategy. The communications are just what identity looks like when it’s been resolved rather than managed.

Most brands have not resolved their identity. They have documented it — in brand guidelines, positioning statements, value proposition frameworks — without ever making the harder choices those documents are supposed to represent. The result is a brand that knows its personality adjectives but cannot act on them in real time without checking whether this particular execution is still on-brand. Which means the personality exists as a description rather than a conviction. And descriptions do not produce the kind of instinctive, confident communication that this cultural moment is rewarding.

The Culture Force™ does not care about your brand guidelines. It shifts based on what people find credible, what signals confidence, what feels like it comes from somewhere real. Right now, in a significant number of categories — particularly those carrying identity weight, where what you choose says something about who you are — that credibility is flowing toward brands that have clearly stopped seeking permission from their audience.

And here is the commercial consequence that makes this more than a Friday observation about funny social media accounts. The brands that cannot access this energy are not just losing cultural relevance. They are losing pricing power. Because the premium a brand can charge above a functional substitute is almost entirely a function of what choosing it signals — to others and to yourself. When a brand’s communications read as anxious and approval-seeking, that anxiety transfers. It undercuts the very confidence the customer is trying to buy.

You cannot charge a premium for belonging to something if the something in question is visibly uncertain about what it is.

So what do you actually do with this, if you are a brand that recognises the gap but cannot simply decide to be more unpolished and expect it to work?

The honest answer is that you go back further than the communications. Not to the tone of voice. Not to the content calendar. To the harder questions about who you actually are, who you are genuinely for, and what you believe with enough conviction that you would be willing to lose some people over it. Because that last part — the willingness to not be for everyone — is what produces the clarity that makes everything downstream feel real rather than performed.

The unpolished output is not the goal. It is the evidence that the identity work has been done.

Most brands are trying to copy the evidence without doing the work. Which is, when you think about it, the most on-brand thing they could possibly do.

We continually monitor five forces that shape customer choice. The Culture Force is about the shifts in values, attitudes, social norms, and codes that shift demand, months before it shows up in the numbers.

In Brief
Lots of brands have failed with DTC. And lots of brands have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

DTC didn’t fail. Bad DTC did.
The model was never “sell direct and run ads.”
The model — when it works — is:

Build meaning → create demand → own the relationship → scale distribution later.

The brands that understand this are compounding. The rest are quietly burning cash.

What Is Happening

The first wave of DTC was built on arbitrage.
Cheap Facebook ads. Clean Shopify sites. A slightly better product.

That worked — until it didn’t. Customer acquisition costs rose. Platforms got crowded. Products became interchangeable.

And suddenly, “direct-to-consumer” became expensive, fragile, and dependent on paid media. At the same time, something more important shifted.

Discovery moved into content and culture.

Not search. Not shelves.

Nearly half of consumers now buy directly through social platforms

Gen Z trusts creators and peers more than ads.

And most critically:

People don’t choose brands based on product differences alone.

They choose based on what feels familiar, relevant, and meaningful

Which changes the game entirely.

What Does It Mean

DTC is no longer a distribution strategy.

It’s a demand system.

The winners don’t start with:

“How do we sell this online?”

They start with:

“Why would anyone choose this — and keep choosing it?”

That shift separates two types of brands:

1. Transactional DTC Brands

• built on performance marketing

• optimized for conversion

• dependent on paid traffic

• easily replaceable

2. Choice-Led DTC Brands

• built on identity and relevance

• powered by content and community

• generate organic demand

• scale beyond channels

The second group is where the real growth lives.

What the Best Are Doing

1. They Build Identity Before Distribution

Huel (just sold for 1B).
Liquid Death.
Celsius.
Nocco.
Oatly.
Gymshark.
RevolutionRace.
On.

The list goes on.

They won because they made a clear promise about who the customer becomes.

• rebellion

• progress

• cultural awareness

• performance identity

• etc.

In Choice-Led Growth terms:

They nailed WHO + WHY, not just WHAT.

2. They Treat Content as Core Infrastructure

Most brands “do content.”
The best brands are content systems with content-led growth engines behind them. They leverage communities, consumers, and influencers (especially micro-influencers today).

Gymshark runs challenges like Gymshark66 — turning customers into participants.

Oatly publishes cultural commentary, reports, and provocative messaging — acting like a media company.

Liquid Death builds entertainment, not ads.

This matters because:
Content is what builds mental availability (a fancy term for awareness)— the likelihood of being chosen when the moment comes

Without it, you’re invisible.

3. They Create Participation, Not Just Reach

Audience is passive. Community is active.

The best brands design challenges, rituals, events, ambassador systems, reward loops, etc.

This turns customers into repeat buyers, advocates, and distribution channels

In effect:

Community becomes free media with memory.

4. They Use DTC to Learn — Not Just Sell

DTC gives something more valuable than margin.

It gives signal.

Brands like On and RevolutionRace use direct channels to:

• test demand

• refine positioning

• understand behavior

• improve products faster

That creates a compounding advantage:

Better insight → better product → stronger relevance → more choice → more growth.

5. They Expand After Demand Is Proven

Here’s where most people misunderstand DTC.

The goal is not to stay “pure DTC.”

The goal is to earn the right to scale.

• On expands into retail while growing DTC fast

• Gymshark builds flagship stores as community hubs

• Huel moves into 25,000+ stores after building a direct base

DTC is the launch system.

Not the end state.

Where Most Brands Go Wrong

They reverse the order.

They start with:

• product

• performance marketing

• distribution

And then try to “add brand” later. But growth doesn’t work that way.

Psychology → Value → Relevance → Choice → Growth

If you skip the early steps, the later ones become expensive.

Where the Upside Is

The opportunity is not in “doing DTC better.” It’s in building owned demand.

That means:

• less reliance on paid acquisition

• stronger pricing power

• higher lifetime value

• faster feedback loops

• more resilient growth

In a market where CAC keeps rising and attention keeps fragmenting, this is not a nice-to-have.

It’s survival.

What Leaders Should Do

1. Redefine DTC internally

It’s not e-commerce. It’s demand creation + relationship ownership.

2. Start with identity, not product

Who is this for?

Who do they become by choosing you?

3. Invest in content like a capability, not a channel

Consistency beats campaigns.

Meaning beats volume.

4. Design participation loops

Make customers part of the system, not just buyers.

5. Use DTC as intelligence infrastructure

Every interaction is a signal. Use it.

The Bottom Line

DTC didn’t stop working. Shortcut DTC stopped working.

The brands winning today aren’t better at ads.

They’re better at being chosen.

And they’ve built systems — content, community, identity — that make that choice feel obvious.

Here’s a brutal question I like to ask leadership teams:

Can a customer understand why they should choose you in under 10 seconds?

Not after a demo.
Not after a white paper.
Not after a 42-slide pitch deck.

Ten seconds.
Cold.

If the answer is no, you don’t have a marketing problem.
You have a clarity problem.

And clarity is the gateway drug to growth.

Confusion Is Expensive

Customers don’t sit around trying to decode you. They’re not archaeologists. They’re busy, distracted, skeptical, and swimming in alternatives that all claim to be “innovative,” “leading,” and “customer-centric.”

When they walk into your store, browse your website, check your social media, feel out your products, talk to your customer service...do they instantly get your brand?

It’s the good old “brand or bland” test.

When your proposition is vague, complex, or generic, one thing happens immediately:

They move on.

Not because you’re bad.
Because you’re not obvious.

In a choice-saturated market, the easiest option is rarely the cheapest. It’s the clearest.

The Hidden Consequences of Failing the Test

When customers can’t quickly grasp why you matter, the damage spreads quietly across the business.

Price becomes fragile because you haven’t established a compelling reason to pay more. You end up competing on cost, not value.

Sales cycles stretch because every conversation starts with basic education instead of moving toward decision. Your sales team becomes interpreters of your own company.

Marketing costs rise because you need more impressions, more touchpoints, more retargeting, more “nurture” just to get to baseline understanding. You’re paying to compensate for weak clarity.

None of this shows up on a single dashboard. But it shows up everywhere.

Why This Happens So Often

Most value propositions are written from the inside out.

They describe what the company does, how the product works, how long the firm has existed, how many awards it has won. In other words, they answer questions customers never asked.

Customers are asking something much simpler:

Why is this the best choice for me right now?

Not “Tell me your story.”
Not “Walk me through your capabilities.”
Not “Show me your org chart.”

Just: Why you?

The Market Readiness Reality Check

Before you pour money into campaigns, partnerships, or expansion, there’s a more fundamental test:

Are you even ready to be chosen?

Market readiness isn’t about having a product. It’s about having a proposition that lands instantly — one that fits a specific customer, situation, and outcome so cleanly that the choice feels obvious.

When that alignment exists, marketing accelerates growth.

When it doesn’t, marketing amplifies confusion.

Obvious Beats Impressive

Companies often try to sound sophisticated. They pile on features, jargon, and positioning statements that read like they were assembled by committee.

But customers don’t reward sophistication. They reward certainty.

They want to know:

Will this solve my problem?
Will it work for someone like me?
Will it make me look smart for choosing it?

If those answers aren’t clear quickly, doubt fills the vacuum.

And doubt kills deals.

The Real Goal

Your value proposition doesn’t need to be poetic. It doesn’t need to be clever. It doesn’t need to win awards.

It needs to be understood.

In ten seconds, a customer should be able to say:

“I get it. This is for people like me, with a problem like mine, and it will get me where I want to go.”

If they can say that, price becomes stronger, sales become easier, and marketing becomes more efficient.

If they can’t, no amount of activity will save you.

The Bottom Line

Growth doesn’t come from being visible.
It comes from being the obvious choice.

And obviousness is not a branding afterthought. It’s a strategic asset.

So here’s the uncomfortable closing question:

If a perfect prospect landed on your website right now, would they understand why they should choose you before their coffee gets cold?

If not, you don’t need more leads.

You need more clarity.

Most functional beverage brands think they’re competing on ingredients.

They’re not. They’re competing on relevance — and many are losing without noticing.

We’ve just published a new Category Brief™: Functional Beverages, looking at how customer choice is shifting across North America and Europe. Not trends. Not tactics. The mechanics of why people choose one drink over another — and why so many brands are becoming interchangeable.

A few nuggets from the Brief:

• Function is everywhere. Meaning is scarce.
  Ingredients no longer differentiate. Felt benefit and identity fit do.

• Consumers aren’t choosing categories — they’re choosing moments.
  Your real competitors may be supplements, coffee rituals, sleep aids, or doing nothing.

• Wellness has fragmented.
  Calm, focus, discipline, softness, performance — there is no single “healthy” narrative anymore.

• Premium survives only when value is emotionally justified.
  Clean labels aren’t enough. People need to feel the benefit — fast.
  
  This free Brief is a short-form intelligence snapshot — designed to help leaders see where the Relevance Gap™ is opening in the category.

For clients, we go much further.

Our Strategic Intelligence subscription includes:

• In-depth category and demand-side reports

• A specific lens on your brand, your offering, and your ideal customer profiles

• Ongoing signal monitoring across our Five Forces

• Live briefing sessions with leadership teams

• And strategic interventions when relevance, growth, or positioning is at risk

The free Brief shows how we think.
The paid work is where this thinking gets applied — continuously, contextually, and decisively. We offer both one-off diagnosis and strategic interventions, as well as an ongoing “demand radar”, complemented with monthly briefs and interventions.

👉 Read the free Category Brief here

And if you’re responsible for growth, relevance, or long-term advantage — you’ll recognize why this matters now.

Clarity beats activity.
Judgment beats more data.
Choice beats noise.

— Tobias, Original Minds

Let’s say the quiet part out loud.

Most companies have a shockingly weak understanding of their ideal customers.

Not vague. Not “room for improvement.” Weak.

And I don’t mean they lack data. They often have plenty of data.

What they lack is understanding.

I see this constantly—across operating companies, scale-ups, incumbents, even firms that pride themselves on being “customer-centric.” Ask a few basic questions and the cracks show immediately.

Who is your ideal customer, really? What is the best, most potential customer segment or segments for your brand and business? Why?

What outcome are they actually trying to achieve? What matters to them while they’re trying to achieve it? What are they trying to avoid? What frustrates them? What do they fear going wrong? Who do they want to become as a result?

Cue the silence. Or worse: generic personas, demographic fluff, and surface-level “needs” that every competitor could copy-paste.

Here’s the brutal rule of the market:

If you don’t understand your customer better than your competitors, your chances of satisfying them better are close to zero.

Most ICPs Are Defined at the Surface. That’s the Problem.

Most companies stop at who:

• company size

• industry

• job title

• age, income, geography

That’s not an ICP. That’s a mailing list.

When I ask companies about their ideal customer/consumer, I hear profiling like this. most of the time:

“Our ideal consumers are active women aged 25-45 who care about health. They like yoga and eat healthy.” That’s about it. Then they want to sell this “segment” food products, wellness services, functional beverages, subscriptions, or whatever.

This kind of understanding might work for media buyers who look for the right places to advertise, but it certainly does not uncover why these people choose.

An actual ICP lives at a deeper level.

Because people don’t choose based on who they are. They choose based on what they are trying to get done, how they want it done, and why it matters to them.

If you serve both buyers and end users (which many businesses do), the problem multiplies.

Retail buyer ≠ end consumer. Procurement ≠ daily user. Economic buyer ≠ emotional user.

Different outcomes. Different risks. Different definitions of “success.”

If you don’t understand both—and how they diverge—you’re designing products, experiences, and messaging that satisfy no one particularly well.

The Four Layers Most Companies Miss

To truly understand your ICP, you need to go beyond profiles and into choice logic.

We break it down like this:

1. WHO — The actor

Not just role or segment, but identity within context: Where they sit, what pressure they’re under, what success and failure look like in their world.

2. WHAT — The outcome

What are they really trying to achieve? Not “buy software” or “choose a supplier,” but the result they want in their life or business.

Outcomes can be:

• functional

• emotional

• social

• professional

• existential

Most are a combination.

3. HOW — The experience

This is the most neglected layer, yet the space where lots of innovation take place.

How do they want to go about achieving the outcome?

• Fast or thorough?

• Guided or autonomous?

• Low risk or high upside?

• Simple or sophisticated?

This is where pains and gains live:

• What frustrates them?

• What slows them down?

• What must not happen?

Two customers can want the same outcome—and choose entirely different brands based on how they want to get there.

For example, two brands offer the same outcome, but in totally different ways. You can fly London to New York in economy or first class. Same destination, very different experience.

4. WHY — The deeper motivation

This is where most companies stop asking questions far too early.

The why is rarely visible on the surface. You uncover it by asking “why?” repeatedly—until you hit something human:

• fear

• pride

• safety

• autonomy

• belonging

• competence

• control

This is where relevance is born. This is also where most great brands build their differentiation and stickiness, because when you deliver meaning, you matter.

Identity Transformation Is the Highest-Value Layer of All

There’s one more dimension most ICPs completely ignore:

Who does the customer aspire to become?

People don’t just buy outcomes. They buy identity progress.

• “A smarter leader” (The Economist)

• “An everyday athlete” (Nike)

• “A responsible buyer” (Patagonia)

• etc.

If you don’t understand the identity your customer is moving towards, you’re competing on features while someone else is competing on meaning.

And meaning wins.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

We’re in a choice-saturated economy.

Customers don’t lack options. They lack clarity. And clarity only comes from brands that get them—deeply, precisely, uncomfortably well.

That level of understanding feeds everything:

• strategy

• innovation

• positioning

• brand

• messaging

• sales

• pricing power

Without it, you’re guessing. With it, you’re designing choice.

Data Isn’t the Problem. Interpretation Is.

This is where many organizations get defensive.

“We have surveys.” “We have dashboards.” “We have personas.”

Good. That doesn’t mean you understand your customer.

Understanding can come from great triangulation:

• qualitative insight

• behavioral signals

• cultural context

• category dynamics

AI can help accelerate this. Customer interviews can deepen it. But tools don’t replace thinking.

Insight isn’t collected. It’s constructed.

A Simple Question for Leaders

Here’s the test I leave leaders with:

Do you understand your ICP so well that you could predict their choices better than anyone else in your category?

If not, ask yourself:

• How will you out-innovate them?

• How will you out-position them?

• How will you out-market them?

• How will you justify a premium?

You won’t.

Because in a choice-driven market, relevance isn’t a slogan. It’s earned through understanding.

And the brands that understand best don’t just compete.

They become the most relevant choice.

Tobias

Interested in developing a richer understanding of your ideal customers and using these insight to drive choice-led growth? Email us at hello[at]originalminds.co

In Brief
Netflix trying to buy Warner Bros Discovery isn’t a content play. It’s a response to a deeper problem: choice fatigue. And the next phase of streaming won’t be won by whoever owns the most IP — but by whoever becomes the default choice in an overcrowded decision environment.

SIGNAL — What’s happening?

According to The Economist, Netflix is weighing a blockbuster acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, potentially fending off interest from Paramount Global.

On the surface, this looks like:

• a scale grab

• a content arms race

• a defensive move as subscriber growth slows

Investors are nervous because it feels like Netflix is admitting its organic growth engines are weakening.

But that interpretation misses the real signal.

INSIGHT — The real problem isn’t growth. It’s choice.

Streaming has quietly crossed a critical threshold: There are now too many “good enough” options.

When every platform has:

• premium production values

• global hits

• deep back catalogues

the consumer problem is no longer availability. It’s decision-making.

And in markets like this, choice doesn’t scale linearly with options. It collapses.

Consumers respond by:

• defaulting to one or two services

• rotating subscriptions

• cancelling aggressively

• or not choosing at all

This is classic choice compression.

From a choice perspective, Netflix’s move isn’t about owning more shows. It’s about becoming the safest, simplest, most justifiable default in a noisy category.

In other words:

“If I only keep one service, it should be Netflix.”

Owning Warner’s IP isn’t about marginal content gains. It’s about reducing the cognitive risk of choice.

Why investors are uneasy — and why they might be wrong

Investors worry that acquisitions signal weakness.

But in choice-driven markets, consolidation is often a sign of category maturity, not failure.

When growth slows, brands have three options:

1. Fight harder for attention

2. Compete on price

3. Absorb choice alternatives

Netflix choosing option three suggests a strategic insight:

Growth now comes less from adding new choosers — and more from becoming the final chooser.

This isn’t about penetration anymore. It’s about retention through inevitability.

OPPORTUNITY — What this means beyond streaming

This is not just a media story. It’s a playbook for any saturated category.

When categories overload consumers with options, the winner is the brand that:

• simplifies the decision

• feels culturally central

• reduces regret

• becomes the “no one ever got fired for choosing this” option

In choice terms, Netflix is trying to shift from:

“Best streaming service” to “The only one you really need.”

That’s not a content strategy. That’s choice dominance.

The bigger takeaway for leaders

If your growth plan assumes:

• more features

• more options

• more launches

you may be accelerating choice fatigue — not demand.

In mature markets, growth comes from absorbing choice, not multiplying it.

Netflix’s boldest bet isn’t that Warner’s content will grow subscribers. It’s that reducing the perceived need to choose will.

And that’s a lesson far bigger than streaming.

Most brands (the companies behind them) assume their biggest battles are inside the category.
They’re wrong.

The biggest threat to FMCG and wellness brands in 2026 isn’t competition. It’s Cultural Drift — the widening gap between what the world signals and what your brand expresses.

Here’s how cultural drift actually works (few leaders understand this):

Culture moves →
Consumers reinterpret meaning →
Categories reshuffle →
Competitors reframe →
Your brand stays still →
Relevance erodes silently.

No crisis.
No disaster.

Just a slow, compounding misalignment between you and the world you’re trying to matter in. A brand can be well-run and still drift. In fact, the more established the brand, the more likely it is to drift because internal momentum is often stronger than external change.

FMCG and wellness brands are especially vulnerable because:

• tastes evolve faster

• rituals shift

• identity signals matter more

• wellness culture moves weekly

• consumers upgrade their expectations continuously

The problem?
Most organizations don’t measure cultural drift.
They only feel it when innovation stalls, campaigns flatten, retailers push back, pricing power weakens,

or category adjacency disappears.

By then, you’ve already lost ground.

If you want clarity on your own cultural drift — and how to close it — I can run a Brand Relevance Score™ for your brand.
hello[at]originalminds.co

In Brief

Right now, CMO’s and marketing teams are busy creating plans or starting to execute their 2026 marketing plans. But way too few of these plans are connected to the real drivers of growth, and too few marketing people can explain how their work will hit the growth number. In 2026, that gap is where brands quietly lose.

What’s happening?

I’ve had the same conversation too many times.

A CMO walks me through the plan: brand refresh, positioning work, agency brief, campaign rollout, content calendar, a shiny new platform idea, maybe a social play that “will drive engagement.” They are awfully busy briefing agencies, driving campaigns, sticking to their plans.

All solid. All familiar. Nothing wrong about this, accept:

Then I ask one question:

“How does this get you to your growth target?” “Do you know why your audience chooses you?” “Do you know why they don’t?”

And the room goes… silent.

Not because they don’t care — but because in many organizations, marketing has become a high-output project machine. The work gets done. The decks get approved. The agencies get fed. The campaign launches. Companies loose sight of the big picture.

But the link between marketing investment and growth is often a foggy hope, not a disciplined system.

What does it mean?

Growth is not a marketing activity problem.

It’s a choice problem.

All growth problems are choice problems. Why? Because choice is the only path to revenue growth, and there are only three ways growth happens in the real world:

1. More people choose you (penetration)

2. People choose you more often (frequency)

3. People choose you at a higher price (pricing power)

That’s it. Everything else is a supporting act.

Brand strategy matters — but it only matters if it increases one of those three forms of choice. Positioning matters — but only if it changes who chooses you, why they choose you, or what they’ll pay. Campaigns matter — but only if they shift behavior, not just awareness.

All marketing effort should be connected to the three ways to grow (above), otherwise they are disconnected from growth.

A lot of marketing is “good work” that doesn’t move choice.

It looks like progress. It feels like progress. It often wins awards for progress. But it doesn’t produce growth because it isn’t built on a clear theory of why humans choose — and what specifically must change for them to choose you.

That missing link is the void.

And the void is expensive.

CMOs are often managing a factory of activity while being asked to deliver an outcome of psychology.

That’s not a skills gap. It’s an operating gap.

Where should you focus?

If you’re a CMO in 2026, the job evolves from “marketing leader” to something sharper:

1) Become Chief Choice Officer

Not in title. In practice.

Every major initiative should answer:

• Which choice lever are we moving? (penetration / frequency / price)

• Which audience segment’s choice are we changing?

• What is the psychological barrier today?

• What must be true in their mind for them to choose us?

If an initiative can’t answer those questions, it’s not strategy. It’s motion.

2) Replace the “Marketing Plan” with a Choice Plan

A marketing plan lists activities.

A choice plan links activities to outcomes.

Your plan should read like a chain of causality, not a list of deliverables.

Example:

• We are losing new buyers because the category sees us as “a good choice, not the most relevant choice”

• We’re only chosen during weekends, what new formats and occasions do we need to invest in to drive frequency during weekdays?

• So we will sharpen a single, defensible value proposition with new offerings and marketing campaigns centered around certain occasions and moments.

• Then we will reduce trial friction (availability, onboarding, sampling, guarantees).

• Then we will deploy comms that create reassurance and identity fit.

• Result: more people choose us this quarter.

That sounds more like a growth plan linked to growth.

3) Stop worshipping “brand work” as the answer

Brand matters more than ever — but the role of brand is not decoration.

Brand is a value perception system.

If your brand work doesn’t change how value is perceived (and therefore chosen), it’s not brand strategy. It’s brand therapy.

What should you consider doing?

Here’s a practical tool you can introduce in the article. It’s simple. It’s brutal. It’s useful.

The Choice Ledger (run every initiative through this)

For every major marketing investment, write a one-page “Choice Ledger”:

1. Primary choice lever: penetration / frequency / price

2. Target chooser: who specifically must change behavior?

3. Current barrier: what stops them choosing today?

4. Desired belief: what must they believe for choice to change?

5. Mechanism: how will this initiative create that belief?

6. Proof: what will make it credible (product, service, people, environment, comms)?

7. Leading indicator: what signal tells us choice is moving before revenue shows up?

If you can’t fill this in, pause the project. Not because it’s bad work — but because it’s unlinked work.

What “choice-linked marketing” looks like in real life

• Product: sharper value promise, fewer confusing variants, better “first experience,” stronger proof points

• Service: remove friction, simplify onboarding, reduce risk, make switching easy

• People: train frontline and sales to deliver the same promise (consistency is underrated)

• Environments: retail, digital, packaging — eliminate doubt and amplify the “why us”

• Comms: not louder; clearer. Not more content; better meaning.

The blank stare test (use this as the punch)

If you’re a CMO, try this in your next leadership meeting:

“If we don’t understand how choice happens, and if we don’t invest in it, how do you suppose we will grow the business?”

When brands don’t grow, they drift. They leak. We call it The Relevance Gap™ (because relevance is the key driver of chocie).

This is the gap we obsess over at Original Minds.

Not “how to do better campaigns.” Not “how to write nicer positioning.” But how to close the distance between:

• what makes humans choose and

• what brands actually deliver and communicate

Because relevance isn’t something you claim. It’s something customers grant — in a specific moment, in a specific context, against specific alternatives.

And when that alignment drifts, growth doesn’t collapse overnight.

It erodes.

Quietly.

Then suddenly.

If you’re a CMO or commercial leader and you want a clean read on where your brand is being chosen vs quietly losing choice, DM “Score” and we’ll help you understand where you’re Relevance Gap™ lies, and how to close it.

Brand-building is an infinite game.

Advantage is hard to come by. At least the sustainable kind.

First you work hard to be able to provide clean products, only to find yourself in the same game with most of your competitors. What was first an advantage turns into a hygiene factor, and ticket to entry in the category.

In Brief

“Clean” is everywhere. But in today’s world, clean labels don’t create preference anymore.

SIGNAL — What’s happening?

“No sugar”, “no additives”, “no preservatives”.

It’s the gold standard now.

Walk down any aisle and you’ll find it plastered on nearly every product. Clean, pure, free from anything “bad”.

What was once a differentiator is now the bare minimum.

Consumers expect it.

But here’s the catch: expectation isn’t desire.

Clean labels have become so ubiquitous that they no longer mean anything.

They’re just… safe.

INSIGHT — Why this matters

Consumers don’t buy absence — they buy meaning.

The truth is, clean labels aren’t enough to capture attention. In a market flooded with “better-for-you” claims, brands need to stand for something that cuts deeper than just “no bad stuff”.

Consumers want a brand that reflects who they are, not just what they consume.

The brands that thrive today are those that can tie their products to a larger cultural relevance, values they believe in, and stories that resonate with people on a personal level. That’s what creates loyalty. Not just avoiding sugar or preservatives.

THE DRIFT — Where clean labels miss the mark

Clean is no longer revolutionary — it’s just standard.

So, what’s the mistake brands are making?

They stop at clean.

They use “no artificial anything” as a shield, not realizing that this is the baseline now, not a badge of honor.

It’s a trap many brands fall into: competing on what’s “not in the product” rather than what’s meaningfully in it.

You’re left with a label that says “we’re good”, but doesn’t say anything about the purpose of the brand.

STRATEGIC SHIFT — The commitment to meaning

Winning brands are the ones who go deeper than clean. They’re not just telling you what they’ve removed — they’re showing you what they stand for.

This takes a real commitment. It means brands need to:

• Have authentic values and communicate them clearly.

• Align their purpose with consumers’ aspirations.

• Create emotional resonance, not just functional promises.

This is the real magic. The ones who do this earn preference.

When you show up with a message that resonates with your audience — something that truly matters to them — you create true differentiation.

Meaning is what makes consumers stick. It’s what makes a product more than just a commodity.

EXECUTION — What this looks like in practice

In the age of clean labels, boldness wins.

1. Product: Function is important, but positioning your product as an experience tied to a broader mission is what drives choice.

2. Packaging: Shift from “free from…” to “for…”. What’s the promise behind it? How does it serve the consumer’s lifestyle?

3. Messaging: Move away from just “clean” to authentic purpose-driven messaging. Be the brand that shows up with meaning, not just absence.

4. Culture & Content: Brands that live their values — through storytelling, culture-building, and consistency — earn more than clean labels. They build emotional connection.
   

THE BOTTOM LINE

Clean labels will get your product to the shelf.

Meaning will get it chosen.

Brands need to go beyond “no bad stuff” and show consumers what good looks like in a way that resonates with who they are.

That’s the future. Not just clean. But meaningfully clean.

--

Original Minds® is focuses on helping companies grow by becoming the most relevant choice. We look at the factors affecting choice and relevance and provide intelligence and strategy to accelerate growth.

In Brief

Functional FMCG is drifting into commodity science. What once differentiated brands now barely gets them noticed.

SIGNAL — What’s happening?

Protein is everywhere. Gut health is everywhere.

“No sugar”, “added vitamins”, “immune support”, “energy”, “focus”, “hydration” — everywhere.

Walk down any grocery aisle and you’ll see the same functional promises repeated with minor variations. Different fonts. Same claims. Same logic.

What used to be innovation has become hygiene.

--

I remember running innovation projects ten years ago for FMCG brands across multiple categories when “functional” was the future. It caught on.

INSIGHT — What it really means

Function used to win choice.

Now it only earns entry.

The category has mistaken utility for relevance.

Consumers assume functionality. They don’t reward it.

They don’t choose brands because they work.

They choose brands because they mean something.

When every product promises better digestion, more protein, or cleaner energy, the decision moves elsewhere — to identity, emotion, aesthetics, and worldview.

This is where many FMCG brands get uncomfortable.

Because science feels safe.

Identity feels risky.

So they double down on ingredients, charts, and claims — and quietly slide into sameness.

THE DRIFT — Where brands are going wrong

Most functional brands are still asking the wrong question:

“How do we prove this works?”

The modern consumer is asking something else entirely:

“What does choosing this say about me? What does it make me?”

Functional brands that fail to answer that question don’t become disliked.

They become interchangeable.

And interchangeable brands don’t win preference.

They compete on price, promotions, and shelf position — until margins evaporate.

STRATEGIC SHIFT — Where the winners are moving

The brands pulling ahead aren’t abandoning function.

They’re reframing it.

They understand that:

• Function is table stakes

• Meaning is the differentiator

• Identity is the accelerator

Winning brands translate function into identity outcomes, not technical benefits.

EXECUTION — What this looks like in practice

Product

Function stays — but is framed as a means, not the hero.

Packaging

Less clinical. More cultural. Visual cues signal who the product is for, not just what it contains.

Messaging

From claims → convictions. From features → worldview.

Culture & Content

Participation in identity spaces, not just nutritional conversations.

Experience

The brand feels like an ally in a lifestyle — not a supplement label with opinions.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Function gets you on shelf.

Meaning gets you chosen.

The future of FMCG isn’t won by brands with the best science.

It’s won by brands that translate science into self-image.

Brands that keep selling ingredients will fight for attention.

Brands that sell identity will earn preference.

That’s the difference between growth and drift.

Want to know if your brand is competing on relevance or just function?

Tobias

DM/Message “Score” and I’ll run your free Relevance Score™ – you’ll get valuable insights about what is shifting, and how it’s affecting your category and brand.

Around this time of the year, companies around the world perform the same ritual: They gather in meeting rooms, open a fresh slide deck, and announce, “Let’s build our 2026 plan.”

“What is our GTM plan? Commercial Growth Strategy? Marketing Strategy?”

Whatever you call it, it all comes down to “how do we grow in 2026?”.

And yet — here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most 2026 plans are not plans. They’re presentations of ambition, not engines of growth.

Why? Because they aren’t connected to numbers that explain where growth actually comes from. The logic is missing. The mechanism is missing. The math is missing.

THE BLIND SPOT: MOST PLANS ARE NOT CONNECTED TO CHOICE

The most worrying thing about 2026 planning season is this: Teams are crafting brand strategies, marketing strategies, innovation roadmaps, and commercial growth plans without grounding them in the only thing that creates growth:

Customer choice.

The lifeblood of every business.

You grow only when more people choose you, or the same people choose you more often, or when they pay more when they choose you.

Everything else — campaigns, line extensions, channel plays, product launches — is theatre unless it moves one of these levers.

THE ONLY THREE WAYS TO GROW

Every business, every category, every market, every model ultimately comes down to three numbers:

1. Penetration — How many people choose you.

More buyers, more households, more trial. This is the growth engine for 90% of brands, yet it’s the least explicitly modeled.

2. Frequency — How often they choose you.

Your existing customers already know you and already buy you. Often the biggest, fastest win in FMCG and retail is increasing the number of occasions you exist in.

A 20–30% increase in frequency can transform a brand — without a single new product. But you only see that when you break your numbers down.

3. Pricing Power — How much they pay when they choose you.

Premiumisation isn’t a slogan. It’s the commercial reward for building meaning, relevance, distinctiveness, and trust.

If your 2026 plan talks about “brand building” without connecting it to pricing power, you’re not doing strategy — you’re doing poetry.

THE MOMENTS YOU AREN’T IN ARE THE GROWTH YOU DON’T HAVE

If you’re an FMCG or D2C brand, for example, frequency is usually the biggest blind spot. Ask yourself:

• How many times per week, month, or season should people be buying?

• How many times do they actually buy?

• Where are the missing occasions?

• What moments are you invisible in?

• What rituals haven’t you created?

If you are bought 3 times a month, and you can become a 4-times-a-month brand, you don’t need a new market — you need to enter the moments that matter.

Growth hides in the calendar: mornings, commutes, workouts, late nights, celebrations, recoveries, holidays, winters, summers.

Strategy is about owning more of these moments.

THE 2026 REALITY CHECK

Too many 2026 plans are built around launches, campaigns, or expansion — not around the mechanics of how money will actually be made.

Here’s the rule: If your plan doesn’t start with penetration, frequency, and pricing power, it’s not a growth plan. It’s a wishlist.

And wishlists don’t survive in competitive markets.

THE SHIFT LEADERS MUST MAKE

1. Start with the numbers, not the narrative.

Before you talk about “brand love” or “modernisation” or “awareness,” ask: Where, precisely, will revenue grow? From whom? In which lever? In which market? In which moment?

2. Tie every strategic choice to one of the three growth levers.

If it doesn’t move penetration, frequency, or pricing power, cut it, shrink it, or ignore it.

3. Recognise that growth = choice.

This is the through-line of your entire 2026 strategy. Your job isn’t to get seen — it’s to get chosen.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If your 2026 plan isn’t built on the math of choice, you’re not preparing for growth — you’re preparing to be disappointed.

Growth isn’t mysterious. It’s mechanical. It’s measurable. It’s predictable.

More people choose you. People choose you more often. People choose to pay more when they choose you.

Everything else is noise.

If you want to anchor your 2026 plan to the hard commercial truth of how growth actually happens, DM “2026” and I’ll show you where your biggest relevance — and revenue — gaps are hiding.

🚀 And, if you want, we can help you create a GTMP plan, Growth Strategy, Marketing Strategy, (or whatever name you prefer) that drives growth through CHOICE.

Are you ready to look at how culture and values are changing for 2026 and beyond?

Here’s the pattern:

From wealth → wellbeing → wisdom → autonomy.
What brands must signal to feel modern and desirable.

In Brief

Aspiration has quietly rewritten itself.
Money no longer signals status in the same way as before.
Wellness is table stakes.
Wisdom is rising.
And autonomy — the ability to live on your own terms — is becoming the ultimate flex.

The brands that win in 2026 will be the ones that understand this new hierarchy of desire — and signal the identity consumers are now chasing.

SIGNAL — What’s happening?

Across categories, consumers are abandoning traditional status cues:

• Flashy consumption feels insecure.

• Performative wellness has peaked.

• “Hustle culture” is losing social capital.

• Optimization has replaced indulgence.

• People want privacy, competence, and control — not noise, hype, or drama.

The new cultural aspiration is sovereignty — owning your time, energy, and identity.

Autonomy is emerging as the highest form of status:

• Financial autonomy

• Wellness autonomy

• Location autonomy

• Emotional autonomy

• Professional autonomy

The shift is simple:
People now aspire to become less dependent on systems, institutions, and noise — and more self-directed.

INSIGHT — What it means

The modern consumer no longer buys a product.
They buy a promise of who they can become.

Yesterday’s aspiration was wealth — signal power.
Then came wellbeing — signal balance.
Now the cutting edge is wisdom and autonomy — signal independence, direction, and self-mastery.

This shift is happening because:

• People trust institutions less than ever.
  They trust outcomes, proof, and self-guided systems.

• Everyone is overwhelmed.
  Simplicity, clarity, and competence have become luxury goods.

• Identity is the new economy.
  People choose brands that confirm their worldview and reflect the “future self” they are building.

• Freedom is the new aspiration.
  Not freedom as rebellion — freedom as control, capability, and sovereignty.

The new status symbol isn’t a Rolex.
It’s optionality.

STRATEGIC SHIFTS — What brands must signal

To feel modern and desirable in 2026, brands must shift from “look at us” to “this is who you become with us.”

1. Signal Capability, Not Consumption

Avoid flashiness; elevate competence.
Make your customer more capable — physically, mentally, financially, creatively.

2. Signal Calm, Not Chaos

Clarity and focus are premium.
Design, language, and experience should give people cognitive space.

3. Signal Proof, Not Promises

Consumers want receipts.
Outcomes, evidence, progress dashboards, meaningful testimonials.

4. Signal Identity, Not Utility

Tell them who they are becoming with your brand.
Identity is the new conversion engine.

5. Signal Autonomy, Not Attachment

Build products and systems that give people control, flexibility, and sovereignty.
Anything that reduces dependence becomes magnetic.

If you’re a modern leader, your brand cannot signal yesterday’s aspiration.
Your customer has evolved.
Their desires have matured.
Their status cues have shifted toward:

less noise, more meaning
less display, more depth
less dependence, more autonomy.

Your job is not to keep up.
It’s to help them move forward.

Final Words

The next decade belongs to the brands that understand what consumers truly want: not more products — but more power over their own lives.

If your brand doesn’t signal that, it risks drifting into irrelevance, no matter how strong your product is.

Tobias

Want to know if your brand signals the right aspiration for 2026?
Reply with “Score” and I’ll run your Brand Relevance Score™.

or...want the full picture to inform your relevance and growth in 2026?
The Brand Relevance Playbook™ combines a broad range of signals (macro, culture, category, competition, consumer/customer, brand) with sense-making and insights, strategic direction, and a broad range of execution examples and ideas. DM for more.

Each brand reviewed will get a Relevance Verdict, similar to our Relevance Score. So, we’ll see how this goes...I am sure I’ll trigger some people...hopefully not too much. But true to my nature, I’ll be straight and share my honest view as a brand strategist, informed by all the signals, trends, and insights provided by our Brand Intelligence System at Original Minds®.

Here is the first verdict, and I’ll start with a brand we all know: BOSS

BOSS sits in a dangerous middle lane of global fashion — premium pricing without luxury status, mass distribution without mass love. Once a symbol of sleek German precision, it now competes in a hyper-fragmented market where identity, culture, and meaning drive choice.

Its category stakes are high: men’s fashion is undergoing a generational shift toward personal style, cultural codes, and values-led brands. BOSS remains a household name — but names alone don’t buy relevance anymore.

Signals

1. Identity-first fashion: Consumers (especially Gen Z–Millennials) buy brands that mirror who they are or who they want to become — not just what fits.

2. Cultural diffusion: Streetwear, luxury, nostalgia, and creator-led brands are rewriting the style codes BOSS once owned.

3. The Brand Barbell: The market squeezes the middle — cheap or luxury wins. Mid-tier fashion brands must deliver meaning or die.

How They’re Showing Up

BOSS is leaning heavily into celebrity marketing and high-polish campaigns. Visually clean, expensive-looking, often athletic-infused. But the brand lives mostly in traditional advertising spaces, not cultural ones. The work signals aspiration but not identity. It feels controlled, safe, and slightly generic — a premium fashion brand trying to play modern but still anchored in a 2010s aesthetic of “sharp suits, perfect people, controlled confidence.”

Verdict: Relevant or Redundant?

Relevant — but sliding toward Redundant.

BOSS still has equity, reach, and recognition. But it’s operating at a cultural delay. The brand is visible, but not vital. Present, but not participating. It’s in the danger zone where middle-tier brands lose cultural permission quickly if they don’t evolve.

The Relevance Gap™

The gap sits between cultural codes and brand expression. Culture has shifted to personality, story, craft, subculture, and lived authenticity — but BOSS still communicates perfection, control, and sanitized aspiration. Consumers want identity-driven brands; BOSS delivers image-driven branding. The result: it lacks emotional resonance with younger audiences, lacks cultural authority, and lacks distinct meaning in a world where “looking good” is no longer enough.

How to Close the Gap

1. Inject cultural specificity — tap subcultures, creators, and lived narrative—not celebrities and gloss.

2. Move from ‘perfect aesthetic’ to ‘personal identity’ — help people see themselves, not an unattainable ideal.

3. Develop distinctive codes — modern German precision reinvented for today: functional beauty, quiet confidence, utility-meets-style.

4. Redesign the brand’s emotional role — from “look sharp” to “show who you are.”

5. Shift from campaigns to cultural participation — creators, micro-scenes, product storytelling, craftsmanship, transparency.

The Bottom Line

BOSS can still lead — but only if it stops acting like a premium legacy brand trying to stay relevant, and starts behaving like a cultural contributor with a point of view. Modern leaders know: relevance is not inherited; it’s earned in real time.

Feel free to share your thoughts.

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Want to know how relevant (or redundant) your brand is?
DM or reply “Score” and we’ll run your Brand Relevance Score™.

I’ve run a good amount of Brand Relevance Scores for FMCG brands this last month.

Here’s the uncomfortable pattern: the categories aren’t stale — the brands are.

Most FMCG brands aren’t losing relevance because of competition.

They’re losing relevance because culture moved and they didn’t notice.

Here are some problems that keep showing up in the data (these issues don’t apply to all brands I measured, obviously, but the pattern is clear:

Most Brands are 5-10 years behind culture in brand expression.
Still pushing the same safe visuals, the same tired claims, the same category clichés.

It’s like watching someone show up to a 2025 party dressed for 2014.

Zero identity play.
The consumer shifted from “Does this taste good?” to “Does this say something about me?”

Most brands missed it. People want meaning and belonging, not just taste. And brands need it to connect on a deeper level.

The content? Painfully safe.
Product shots. More product shots.
Stock-feeling “lifestyle.”
Awkward influencer bits without cultural context.
This is participation cosplay. Not culture.

The speed problem.
Culture moves in weeks.
These brands move in quarters.
Relevance doesn’t wait.

What this means:
FMCG brands don’t have a marketing problem.
They have a meaning problem — and a decision-speed problem.
Inside, many of these brands are playing the game like it’s 2020.

If you want to know where your brand is drifting — and how deep the drift is — run a Relevance Score™.

It’s shocking how quickly the picture becomes clear.

Reply if you want one - it’s free for brand leaders, CMO’s and CEO’s.

Tobias

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P.S If you are an agency or consultant - I’m looking for partners for Original Minds Intelligence™, and I’ll be happy to discuss.

After 20+ years at the intersection of of brand strategy, innovation, design, and marketing for companies across industries, countries, and stages, I’ve learned one thing with absolute certainty:

AI will change how brands are built.
Most companies are still lagging behind are way too slow to adapt.

But, AI or not...

It will not change what building great brands require the most.

Because every great brand — every brand that stands apart, grows relevance, earns trust, and becomes the most chosen — is built on the same three human forces:

Clarity.
Courage.
Creativity.

These are the real differentiators.
These are the moats.
These are the muscles AI cannot flex for you.

And the thing that binds all three together?

Humanity*.

The leadership, intentionality, taste, guts, and moral compass that no machine will ever possess.

But so far into this article, this sounds like an award speech intended to offend no one.

The asterisk above?

*Humanity, coupled with courage, clarity, and creativity.

Not just humanity alone.

Let’s break this down.

1. Clarity: The Origin of Every Great Brand

Clarity is the foundation.
It’s the act of stripping away noise until only the essential remains.

Clarity is knowing:

• who you are,

• who you serve,

• why you exist,

• and what you will (and won’t) do.

Clarity takes simplifying.

Clarity takes focus.

Clarity creates alignment.

Alignment creates momentum.

Momentum creates growth.

Without clarity, everything collapses:

• your positioning wanders

• your decisions scatter

• your brand drifts

• your team splinters

• your message dilutes

AI can generate options, but only humans can choose a point of view.

Only humans can decide what matters.

Only humans can make trade-offs.

Clarity requires leadership.

And leadership is not programmable.

2. Courage: The Human Edge Technology Cannot Replace

Every great brand is a bet.

A bet on a belief, an idea, a worldview, a way of doing things.

That bet requires courage.

The willingness to do something different.

The willingness to put your reputation (and livelihood) at risk to get behind an idea (or ideal) that you believe in.

The willingness to narrow your focus, and focus on something risky.
Because safe ideas lead to mediocre outcomes.

The willingness to say “no” ten times more than you say “yes.”

Companies don’t lack ideas.

They lack courage.

We’re only human after all.

We’re driven by avoiding pain more than chasing pleasure.

The fear factor is real, and it shows up wherever you look.

Mediocre ideas expressed through brands that want to offend no one, that take no stance, but that also inspires no one.

Courage is the most scarce and valuable resource in business because it asks you to:

• take risks

• challenge norms

• ignore the industry playbook

• go first when everyone else waits

• and create something people will feel

AI will never give you courage.

It can suggest, simulate, or optimize.

But it cannot dare.

That’s the human job.

Always has been.

Always will be.

In my career as a brand strategist, the litmus test of a strategist (in my view) is having the guts to get behind a bold idea and sell it to the client with certainty.

Because, just like with AI that can come up with thousands of ideas for your positioning, identity, your tagline, content, campaigns, you name it...

We maybe did not create as many ideas as fast a few years back..

But we had the same problem.

Which idea is right for the brand?

Who will get behind it?

Who will take responsibility for it, if it fails?

That’s risk.

That involves fear.

And that, takes courage.

That’s why, it usually became a two-way street between myself and the CEO or CMO or a company. Everyone had an opinion, until someone had to risk their reputation, job or career on it.

Let’s be thankful non one can take courage away from us.

Make it your superpower.

3. Creativity: Amplified by AI, Directed by Humans

Now, let’s talk creativity.

People love to say “Only humans can be creative.”

That’s adorable — and wrong.

Well, maybe I should have said imaginative rather than creative, because having ideas is more about imagination than creativity (at least in my book).

Creativity involves output.

AI is already amplifying our imagination, but also our creativity.

• generating ideas at previously impossible speeds

• producing prototypes in minutes

• remixing cultural codes

• expanding our creative vocabulary

• reducing the cost of experimentation to zero

AI is a creativity multiplier.

But — and this is the critical point:

AI does not know what you want to say or why it matters.

AI cannot choose what is worth doing.

Creativity without clarity becomes chaos.

Creativity without courage becomes decoration.

Creativity without humanity becomes noise.

AI can help create.

Only humans can decide what deserves to exist.

The Energy That Binds Them: Humanity

Clarity is human.

Courage is human.

Creativity — when meaningful — is human-directed.

And humanity is the connective tissue.

Humanity is:

• taste

• judgment

• empathy

• intuition

• values

• aspiration

• moral will

• emotional intelligence

• the ability to sense what’s coming, not just what’s trending

Humanity is the thing that stops AI from turning the world into an indistinguishable soup of sameness — which, by the way, is already happening.

We’re seeing mediocrity at scale because everyone now has access to the same weapons of mass creation.

But tools don’t make brands.

Humans do.

AI can produce volume.

Only humans can produce meaning.

The Equation of Modern Brand Building

If you want to build a brand that becomes the most relevant choice in your category, here’s a formula:

Clarity gives direction.

Courage gives differentiation.

Creativity gives expression.

Humanity gives meaning.

Remove any one of them, and your brand collapses.

The Future is Not AI vs. Humans — It’s Humans With AI

I know, it’s been said a million times (and now I’m back sounding like I’m giving the speech at the conference, or at the award ceremony).

But, what I mean to say is...

The brands that win the next decade won’t be the ones with the most data or fastest models.

They’ll be the ones led by humans who:

• know what they stand for

• dare to stand for it and take risks

• express it through creativity amplified by technology

• and infuse every decision with humanity

This combination is the new competitive edge.

Everything else can be automated.

And unless these are your qualities, so can you and I.

So, that leaves us no other choice than to stop playing it so damn safe.

Safe is riskier than ever.

Speak up for what you believe in.

Imagine the world in only 12-24 months from now.

Everyone is putting out 10x more content.

So much more noise.

How will your brand be the most relevant choice?

Because that’s the only thing that matters in brand-building, at the end of the day.

Getting chosen.

Start by choosing yourself.

I’m rooting for you.

Tobias

Original Minds® is on a mission to make your brand the most relevant choice in your space. To get a free Brand Relevance Score™ and identify your Relevance Gap™ - email hello@originalminds.co

Most brands measure what’s easy: awareness, impressions, clicks, sentiment, funnel conversion, reach. NPS.

[For a selected few CMO’s and brand leaders, I provide a free audit to map your Brand Relevance Score™ and Relevance Gap™. More below.]

But very few measure the thing that actually determines whether or not, and the degree to which, their audience will choose them.

There is one metric that matters far more than any other.

Relevance.

Are you the most relevant choice to your ideal consumers (customers)?

How relevant is your brand?

Because people always choose the brand that is the most relevant to their needs, given the choices they have.

And that’s a problem, because every brand ultimately lives or dies by one thing:

Do you matter enough for someone to choose you over the alternatives?

If the answer is “not as much as last year,” your brand is quietly drifting into a dangerous position.

I call this the Relevance Gap™ — the measurable distance between:

• what the world now expects

• what culture now rewards

• what your customer now values

• what your competitors now signal

• and what your brand currently delivers

When that gap widens, growth slows. Pricing power weakens. Loyalty disappears.

When it closes, everything accelerates.

Why I Created The Brand Relevance Score™

Over the past few months, I’ve been running relevance diagnostics on several brands. This week only, we scored three FMCG brands.

Different categories. Different audiences. Different strategies.

Yet they all had one thing in common:

They were drifting.

Not because they were doing something “wrong,” but because the world around them was shifting faster than their strategy.

Culture moved.

Customer criteria changed.

Competitors adapted.

They didn’t. At least yet.

And the score revealed it instantly.

What the Brand Relevance Score™ does is simple:

It quantifies how in-sync (or out-of-sync) your brand is with the world you operate in — across five essential lenses.

This gives you a single number and a clear picture of the Relevance Gap™ —the difference between where your brand is and where the world is heading.

If you’ve ever wondered why growth feels harder, why your campaigns hit less, or why your category suddenly feels more crowded…this is why.

What the Score Reveals

Here are a few examples of what recent scores uncovered (category anonymized):

• Cultural Drift:Strong brand equity, but lagging behind cultural shifts toward authenticity & emotional meaning.

• Category Movement:The category was innovating on new functional promises, but the brand remained in last year’s narrative.

• Consumer Criteria Shift:Younger segments changed their decision drivers — from functionality to identity, from “works well” to “fits me.”

• Competitive Repositioning:One competitor reframed the entire category story and won relevance points without touching price.

Each of these insights can be traced directly to relevance — or loss of it.

Your Invitation: Get Your Brand Relevance Score™

I’m opening up a limited number of Brand Relevance Score™ evaluations over the next week.

You’ll get:

✓ Your brand’s relevance score (0–100)

✓ A breakdown across the four relevance lenses

✓ Key shifts in your world, culture, market, and customer

✓ The size of your Relevance Gap™

✓ The 2–3 strategic implications most likely affecting your growth

No fluff. No generic trend decks.

Just a clear, evidence-based read on where you stand and what needs attention.

This is especially useful for:

• CMOs entering 2025 with new growth targets

• Founders who feel their brand is “slipping” but can’t diagnose why

• Challenger brands competing in fast-moving categories

• Teams preparing for rebranding or strategy updates

• Anyone who wants to lead their category — not react to it

If you want your brand’s Relevance Scoreæ (and understand your Relevance Gap™)

Just reply to this email.
Tell me a but about your brand and situation.

It’s quick, painless, and gives you the kind of clarity that normally takes months to uncover.

For the right people, I’ll set up a 30-40min debrief whare I go through your score, and the gap you need to fix.

This is not exact science, it’s directional.
We do deeper analysis for clients where we input more variables.
This is to show you how this stuff works.

AI + Human Synthesis.

Let’s close your Relevance Gap™

— before your competitors do.

— Tobias

There is a great strategic question I like to ask my brand and business clients, a provoking, revealing question that you probably did not hear before.

In fact, it’s my second go-to question after “Why Should They Choose You” - my favorite brand strategy question.

It’s uncomfortable. It forces you to confront the elephant in the room. Or many of them. And it will expose the weaknesses, the gaps, and, most crucially, the truth about where your brand stands.

It forces you to ask yourself whether your focus is on the right customers and consumers, and how relevant your brand really is.

And best of all, it exposes you to your big potential, because it can be measured.

The question is deceptively simple:

Why does not everyone in your category choose our brand?

Eh...what?

No, really.

Taste it. Think about it.

Now you have to ask yourself:
What is our category, really?
What business are we really in?
Who are our ideal customers (consumers) and how do we matter to them?
Are we a bit too broadly defined?

This question exposes what I call The Relevance Gap™. More on this below.

It’s the distance between:

👉 What the world now expects
👉 What culture now values
👉 What customers now desire
👉 What the market now rewards
👉 And what your brand currently delivers

This gap is real, measurable, and it’s the reason brands lose. And the longer you ignore it, the more likely you are to drift and fade from relevance.

So, here’s the uncomfortable truth: If your brand isn’t being chosen, it’s because you’re not as relevant as you think.

Relevance is not binary, it’s a continuum. You can be “kind of relevant”, or “the only choice for me”.

Customer choice is binary, people either choose your brand, or they don’t.

The next question is, how often do they choose you?

To maximise your revenue, you want to be chosen by:

1. More people

2. More times

3. At higher prices

These are the only three factors you can leverage to to grow any business, by the way.

Irrelevance Is The Killer

The real issue behind this question isn’t a lack of awareness. It’s the fact that your brand, as it stands, is out of sync with the world. Maybe you’re still selling the same thing you sold 5 years ago — when customer needs, culture, and expectations have all shifted.

It’s easy to blame the market, competition, or, even the economy. But here’s the thing: You don’t lose because the world changes. You lose because you fail to change with it.

The Relevance Gap™ is the space between where you are and where your customers, culture, and market have moved. The more misaligned you are with any of those, the more you lose choice.

The Relevance Gap™ Can Be Measured

Let’s get a bit more technical. The Relevance Gap™ measures the disconnect between your brand’s offering and what’s happening in the world. It’s a bit like a GPS: if you don’t know where you are in relation to where the world is, you’ll keep driving in the wrong direction. Here’s the formula again:

Relevance Gap = (Total Category Choice Potential - Brand’s Current Choice Capture)

The key here? It’s choice. Your customers’ choice. The world is more fragmented than ever. Choices are abundant. If your brand isn’t the first (or second) choice, then you’re just a “maybe” in a sea of alternatives.

Let’s your category consists of roughly 1M potential buyers. And let’s say they spend $100 per year on widgets like yours. The category is currently worth 100M.

What is your share of it? Let’s assume 10%, or 10M.

Your Relevance Gap™ is 90M.

Let that sink in. It’s not about competing against rivals in the traditional sense. It’s about your brand’s actual share of the category’s total potential — how much of the market is willing to choose you. If you’re not capturing enough of that potential, your relevance gap is wide.

I know, next you’ll tell me this is theory, and that no one can capture 100% of a category. But that’s not the point I am making. Instead, I am asking you to think about a) where your focus needs to be (strategy), and b) how you can become significantly more relevant to your most potential customers (consumers).

The Relevance Gap™ tells you roughly how much you are paying for not having a more focused strategy and a more relevant brand.

Why This Matters

Because relevance drives everything: customer acquisition, retention, price premiums, and repeat business. The problem is, most brands still think in terms of reach, frequency, and differentiation—when what really matters is being for someone, right now.

Sure, differentiation matters, but it’s secondary to relevance. Differentiation is what makes you stand out when someone is already considering you. Relevance is what gets you into the conversation in the first place. If you’re not relevant, you’re not even in the race.

Here’s the simple equation: Relevance = Customer Choice.

That means if people aren’t choosing you, it’s because they don’t see you as relevant to their needs right now.

How We Help You Stay Relevant at Original Minds®

Relevance isn’t a branding theory, it’s a business metric. We’ve built a proprietary system to quantify and close your Relevance Gap™ — because, let’s be honest, guessing isn’t a strategy.

Relevance isn’t a one-time project either. It’s a living, breathing system.

We start through an audit and a full-blown Intelligence Report + Strategic Recommendation + Actionable Brand Playbook.

The Brand Relevance Playbook™ delivers a holistic, actionable framework with actionable with insights, strategy recommendations, and actions (50-100 pages) for realigning the brand to become the most relevant choice in its category, driving customer acquisition, retention, and loyalty. It makes your static brand book look like a pea gun.

We keep you tuned in with the Brand Intelligence Suite:

• The Brand Intelligence Platform — Always-on, real-time access to curated signals and insights to keep your brand in the know.

• The Brand Pulse™ — A periodic briefing that turns new market signals into immediate action for your brand.

• The Brand Intelligence Briefing™ — A quarterly update that recalibrates your strategy, ensuring you stay relevant as the world shifts.

Together, they form a living intelligence loop that tracks change, senses meaning, and keeps your brand the most relevant choice on the market.

The Bottom Line

Relevance isn’t just a buzzword — it’s the metric that determines if your brand wins. Close the Relevance Gap™ and you’ll see bigger customer choice, higher pricing power, and more loyalty.

You don’t need to shout louder — you just need to fit better.

Because in a world that’s always changing, the most relevant brand always wins.

For inquiries:

hello@originalminds.co

www.originalminds.co

p.s. are you a consultant who would love to plug in brand intelligence into your work? Partner with us and use what we built. You’ll be able to get an advantage over competition, provide deeper insights, strategy, and creative, and you’ll make money from every transaction. For more, reply or email us here.

Branding is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in business. When I started in this industry (about two decades ago), I set out to take on this misconception, which I am about to describe.

Armed with this big insight, I was going to change the industry. Or so I thought. A few years in, I gave up on the term branding and started talking about “strategic brand building” to describe what my brand consultancy was doing.

It turned out to be an uphill battle, and little has changed in 20 years.

Ask ten people what branding is, and you’ll get eleven answers — most of them confusing. Ask ten brand consultants what branding is, and most will give you a decent answer, some will give you a great answer, and surprisingly many still see branding in an extremely shallow way.

I have observed that there are roughly these four categories of “perceptions about branding”:

1. Branding as visuals This is the most unsophisticated level, it’s where the CEO tells his assistant “Hey, show them our brand”, indicating that a brand is nothing but a logo and some colors and fonts).

2. Branding as communications Branding is seen as the expression of visual and verbal messages. It’s the “saying vs. being and doing” trap. This is still, unfortunately, where you find the majority of people.

3. Branding as marketing This is already sophisticated, branding sits in the marketing department, and at best it is managed like a strategic marketing function under marketing. But it rarely transcends the marketing department, and the CMO is fully in charge of it.

4. Branding as strategy At this level, branding transcends marketing and it is generally accepted as the “organizing principle” that affects customer choice. The whole business strategy and company is aligned behind the brand strategy, and branding is a strategic, cross-functional philosophy and activity - branding informs all major decisions that in some way, directly or indirectly affects people’s perception of the brand (internally and externally).

To leverage the full potential of branding, you must play at level 4.

To put it in a simple way:

A brand is an idea people hold in their minds.

Branding is everything you do to shape that idea.

That’s it.

Not 300 slides.

Not a mood board.

Not a manifesto printed on a wall that no employee reads.

A brand lives in the mind.

Branding is the act of shaping that mind.

Everything else is details.

The Idea in the Mind

Every brand exists in one place only: inside someone’s head.

That’s where the meaning lives.

That’s where trust lives.

That’s where choice happens.

And here’s the kicker — the company doesn’t own that meaning.

People do.

They co-create it. They decide what your brand is, based on the signals you send and the experiences they have.

A brand is a mental shortcut:

Who are you?

What do you stand for?

Can I trust you?

Are you for me?

Branding is the discipline of shaping that shortcut so that, when it matters most, people choose you.

Choice is everything.

No choice, no revenue.

No revenue, no company.

Branding is the business of shaping choice.

Signals Shape Perception

Every signal your company sends teaches people who you are.

Not what you say you are — what you prove you are.

Signals include:

• Your product and what it’s made of

• Your service and how it feels

• The environments where your brand lives

• The behavior and energy of your people

• Your communications, visual and verbal

• The choices you make, the trade-offs you accept, the standards you keep

Most brands obsess over the last one — communications — while forgetting the first four.

That’s branding’s original sin: confusing messaging with meaning.

Messaging is one dimension.

Branding is five.

The Five Brand Dimensions

Every brand manifests across one or more of five dimensions. These dimensions shape perception — and perception shapes choice. Each brand and category has a different mix.

1. Product

What you make signals who you are.

Ingredients, materials, sourcing, performance — these are identity statements.

2. Service

Every interaction tells people what you value: speed, care, convenience, empathy, expertise.

3. Environments

Where your brand lives shapes how people feel: physical spaces, digital interfaces, packaging, even the checkout experience.

4. People

Employees are the brand. Their tone, behavior, energy, and presence communicate truth more loudly than any tagline.

5. Communications

The stories you tell.

The visuals you present.

The tone you use.

Important, yes — but only meaningful when aligned with the other four.

A brand collapses when these dimensions contradict each other.

A brand compounds when they reinforce each other.

Branding Is a Company-Wide Act

Branding is not the marketing department’s job.

If you limit branding to marketing, you limit your brand to messaging — and messaging without matching behavior produces the world’s most prolific product: cynicism.

Branding is what you build, how you hire, what you reward, how you treat customers, what you stand for, and where you compromise.

It’s not a campaign. It’s a culture.

Not a tagline. A truth.

Not a department. An operating system.

The Customer Choice Equation

In business, everything ladders up to one outcome:

Will the right customer choose you over alternatives?

That’s the game.

That’s the scoreboard.

Every dimension of branding exists for that one reason.

People choose what they perceive as the most relevant option.

Relevance is the intersection of desire, trust, meaning, and timing.

Branding is how you shape relevance.

Why This Matters Now

We’re living in the age of infinite products, infinite content, infinite alternatives.

Customers have more choices than attention.

More noise than clarity.

More information than understanding.

Brands that treat branding as cosmetics will fade.

Brands that treat branding as meaning — built through coherent experience across the five dimensions — will rise.

In a world of abundance, only relevance cuts through.

In a world of sameness, only meaning endures.

In a world where choice is everything, branding is everything.

In Brief

A brand is the idea in their mind.

Branding is everything you do to shape that idea.

Signals shape perception.

Perception shapes choice.

Choice shapes your business.

Therefore:

Branding is the business

.

A Brand Relevance Snapshot by Original Minds Intelligence™
To get a free Snapshot on your brand, email or DM us.

In Brief

Once the jet-fuel of hustle culture, Red Bull is now flying into headwinds. The world’s changing fast: wellness over chaos, focus over frenzy, identity over icon. Red Bull still dominates energy drinks globally (in 2022, it had a 43% share of its category), but shifting culture, audience expectations, and competitive innovation are asking a simple question: Do their wings still fit today’s terrain? If the brand doesn’t evolve its meaning—as much as its marketing—it risks becoming the icon of yesterday. That is, if we look at the Five Vectors Of Brand Relevance™ - our model.

1. World Vector – Contextual Forces

The global scene is recalibrating. The functional beverage market is ticking up: in 2024, functional drinks (including energy) grew 8% in value, reflecting rising demand for wellness-enhanced formats. Euromonitor Yet the very notion of “energy” is being redefined—from high-octane adrenaline to sustained focus, cognitive clarity, and recovery. Regulatory and health pressures are increasing on high-sugar, high-caffeine formats.

Key question: Does Red Bull’s message align with this new world where clean, meaningful energy matters more than blunt force?

2. Culture Vector – Meaning & Morality

Red Bull built its brand on extremes: skydiving, cliff diving, fearless stunt-driven content. But culture is shifting. Younger consumers (Gen Z in particular) are rejecting the “always on” hustle myth and embracing balance, rest, and meaningful performance. If your brand still bangs the drum of “more, faster, louder,” you risk sounding not cool—but outdated.

Key question: Is Red Bull’s culture story resonant with those who value wellness and intention, or just chasing the same adrenaline era?

3. Market Vector – Competitive Dynamics

Yes, Red Bull remains a global powerhouse. Multiple sources suggest a ~43% global energy drink market share in recent years. Cascade But growth is no guarantee of future relevance. Competitors are repositioning “energy” via wellness, cognition and purpose: brands like Celsius emphasize clean ingredients, hydration-driven clubs, and gym culture; others emphasise adaptogens, nootropics, or functional fizzes. If you lead a category, you also become the category—and in commoditised categories, leading can feel stagnant.

Key question: Is Red Bull improving what “energy drink” means, or just defending what it already means?

4. Customer Vector – Desire & Decision

Consumers decide based on the relevance of a brand: does it reflect them, their values, their goals? Younger consumers are more likely to reach for beverages that serve cognitive or wellness-aspirational needs than mere jolts. In the U.S. functional‐beverages market, energy drinks lead with $16 billion of the ~$50 billion category. Glanbia But that doesn’t mean the brand is automatically relevant to all segments. What worked for “party, adventure, extreme” may no longer align with “focus, wellness, clarity.”

Key question: Does Red Bull make younger, wellness-driven audiences think “that’s for me,” or does it still sing the adrenaline tune of their older siblings?

5. Brand Vector – Expression & Energy

One of the world’s most recognisable brands—yes. The slim blue-and-silver can, the slogan, the wings myth—they still carry weight. But everywhere we look, brand expression is evolving: creators, meme culture, rapid content, participatory rituals replace polished stunts. If your brand looks like it’s still caught in the 2000s stunt loop, you risk being seen as legacy rather than living.

Key question: Is Red Bull’s brand expression evolving fast enough to remain culturally fluent—and not just historically iconic?

Relevance Rating (2025 Snapshot)

VectorStatusRiskWorldTrending but mis-matchingGlobal DriftCultureIconic but ageingCultural DissonanceMarketStrong shareCategory StagnationCustomerLoyal coreMis-fit with youngerBrandHighly recognisedInertia in expression

Overall verdict:
Red Bull remains massively visible but is at risk of growing less relevant. It’s strong in category, but weaker in cultural motion and future-proofing. If the brand rests on legacy rather than reinvention, the wings might still exist—but the flight path may need recalibrating.

Opportunity Questions for Red Bull

• Re-define energy: Broaden the concept from pure adrenaline to smart energy—focus, clarity, recovery.

• Update the mythos: From daredevil to do-gooder – creators, culture builders, makers not just thrill-seekers.

• Modernise expression: Move beyond stunts to moment-driven, participatory formats suited to Gen Z and digital culture.

Or, would these moves actually kill the brand?
Join in on the conversation.

P.S We measure The Relevance Gap™ - the measurable degree of misalignment between what your brand offers, what customers now value, what the market provides, how culture is shifting, and how the world is changing.

When that gap widens, you lose the only thing that matters: customer choice. And increases in choice (or decrease) can be measured in dollars, euros, pounds, or yen (or whatever you prefer).

For this example, we only did a “quick and dirty” snapshot without any brand inputs. In our real audit, we measure everything from brand position to marketing, product, service, and much more.

Sources

1. “Innovation and functionality drive global soft drinks market to USD 1.1 trillion” – Euromonitor, June 2025. Euromonitor

2. “The Ultimate Red Bull Marketing Strategy Study” – Cascade, December 2023. Cascade

3. “US Functional Beverage Market Insights 2025” – Glanbia/Nutri-Knowledge Center, February 2025. Glanbia

4. Euromonitor “Energy Drinks in the US” overview, Aug 2025. Euromonitor