The case against runaway blanding

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace Content. We curate the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send tips and feedback to [email protected].  

Hello everyone,

This week, we are fortunate to have yet another Vivace community expert lending us their pen: brand and marketing leader Rob Sartain generously took a break from The Bob Tree to discuss the plight of ‘blanding’ and the need for brands to stand up and stand out against the pressure to conform.

One of Vivace's strongest values is the belief that every brand has a unique story to tell – and a big part of why we founded this business.

If you’re looking for more from Rob, check out my interview with him, digging into his career journey, and how AI will impact creative professions.

-joel

The Sound of Belief

Guest essay by Rob Sartain

No more pops and bangs hark the cries!

It’s a consensus that echoes like a fading chorus in a once-roaring arena through automotive forums of late, the beloved pops and bangs of adventure fading into silence. 

Things have gotten eerily quiet in the automotive world; the guttural growls, the piercing pops, and the booming bangs that once heralded a car's arrival—gone. Silenced. Muffled into oblivion by the fun police masquerading as environmental regulators.

They were the sounds of personality. The audible swagger of a machine not just built to transport but to announce itself. It's enough to make a petrolhead weep into their cylinder head.

But this isn't about cars. It's about something much bigger: the slow, insidious erosion of what makes a brand unique. 

Like those freshly neutered exhausts, brands need their pops and bangs—the quirks, bold statements, and unapologetic declarations that set them apart. Yet many brands today are choosing the path of least resistance; smoothing over their rough edges and muting their palettes. Distinctive roars subjugated into polite, inoffensive hums. 

And it's all in the name of "broader appeal" or "fitting in."

Yes, the world is changing. Regulations are tightening, and the pressure to conform is real. But fitting in never made history. And history doesn't remember the quiet. It remembers the roar—the risk-takers who weren't afraid to pop and bang in a world full of whispers.

Here's the thing: when a brand tones down its personality, it doesn't just lose a bit of noise—it loses its identity. And that's a recipe for disaster in a more crowded and competitive marketplace. It’s the pops and bangs that get you noticed and make you memorable in a sea of sameness. 

Let's look at what's happening here: this trend, often called "blanding," is the enemy of branding. Blanding is the art of stripping away everything unique, crafting generic identities that mindlessly follow trends to stay current. But in doing so, brands lose what matters most: their authenticity and distinctiveness. When we start to strip away the personality, edge, and distinctiveness, we're really stripping away belief. 

And if you don't believe in your brand, why should anyone else?

Think about some of the greatest brands in history—the ones that didn't just survive but thrived in the face of fierce competition. Nike's "Just Do It." Apple's "Think Different." Harley-Davidson's unapologetic embrace of rebellion. These brands didn't just make noise; they made the right noise at the right time.

Let's be clear: a great brand knows when to make noise and when to embrace silence. It’s not just about making a racket; it's about striking the right balance between impact and subtlety, knowing when to turn up the volume and when to let the quiet moments speak just as powerfully.

But you must distinguish being strategic from being safe—not loud for loud's sake. Anyone can shout, but few can captivate. The power lies in knowing what to say when the spotlight is on you and having the confidence to step back when it's not. This isn't a call for relentless noise; it's a call for meaningful presence. 

Consider Old Spice, the doyen of male grooming. The brand was all but irrelevant a decade ago—an afterthought on shelves. Then, they unleashed their now-iconic "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign. It wasn't just noise; it was a perfectly timed explosion of personality that resurrected the brand and made it a cultural phenomenon. Old Spice didn't just make a sound, it made a statement.

And it did so by being unapologetically bold in a world of bland. Because in sanitised, homogenised marketplaces, the brand that dares to make some noise is the brand that gets heard. And isn't that the whole damn point?

Contrast this with Tropicana's 2009 packaging redesign. To modernise, the brand stripped away the elements that made it recognisable. The result? A 20% drop in sales in just two months. Tropicana lost its voice by muting its distinctiveness, and consumers simply tuned out.

LEGO faced a similar crisis in the early 2000s. The brand, known for its creative interlocking bricks, ventured into action figures and digital games, diluting its identity. The outcome was predictable: sales plummeted. But LEGO didn't stay down. By returning to its core product and re-emphasising creativity and play, LEGO didn't just recover; it became a beloved global powerhouse once more.

Because, in the end, the brands that believe in themselves—truly and loudly—are the ones that others believe in, too. Be the brand that dares to make noise. In a world of elevator music, be the guitar solo. In a sea of beige, be the neon sign. In a library of whispers, be the thunderclap.

The marketplace is waiting; start your engines!

Rob Sartain is a brand, creative, and marketing executive with over 20 years of experience, known for inspiring teams and nurturing talent. Career highlights include leading the brand launch of Refinitiv, integrating marketing content for LSEG, establishing data-driven content studios at both, and as a creative director at Thomson Reuters. Like Vivace, Rob is passionate about the power of brand and the role of creativity in driving business success.

💬 What’s next for brands?

The blanding backlash is already underway, beginning yet another cycle of the branding fashion cycle. Minimalism is out, so naturally maximalism is in. This is particularly evident in B2C brands, who tend to lead the curve when it comes to branding evolution, due to their higher appetite for risk and more competitive, saturated marketplaces (on retail shelves for example). The key here? Don’t get chase either trend and keep listening to your customers.

📻️ Tune in

ICYMI, I (joel) launched a new weekly live panel show on Twitter (X) Spaces called Lazer Loons. More on that here.

As the world eagerly awaits a historic presidential debate tonight, I’m still thinking a lot about my interview last week with Greg Swan, a futurist and expert on culture, digital, social, and the intersection of all three.

In the clip from the show above, he gave a great history lesson on how presidential candidates from FDR to JFK, Obama to Trump, and, of course, the Harris-Walz campaign have managed to exploit new media and communications throughout history.

Join us every Friday at 12:00 PM CST for a live episode on Minnesota current affairs, culture, and Tim Walz’s campaign journey.

📆 Coming up

• September | Hispanic heritage month

• September 10 | World Suicide Prevention Day

• September 10-28 | The 79th session of the UN General Assembly

• September 21 | International Day of Peace

• September 22 | Climate Week NYC*

*See you there?

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs, strong opinions, and headlines to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace Content, where we help our clients navigate what to say and how to say it every single day. Get in touch if you’d like to have a no-hassle consultation about how we can help you too. Have a great week ahead.