Why Consistency Beats Creativity in Building Lasting Brands

Every brand consultant will eventually work with a client who wants to "refresh" their identity not because the brand is underperforming, but because they're bored with it. It's one of the most common and most expensive mistakes in brand management.

The Compounding Value of Consistency

Brand recognition is built through repeated exposure to the same signals — colour, typography, tone of voice, photographic style. Every time you change one of those signals, you reset a portion of the mental equity you've built.

This is why companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Hermès move glacially when it comes to brand evolution. Their visual languages have evolved over decades, but always incrementally — a refinement, never a rupture.

Creativity Serves the System, Not the Other Way Around

This isn't an argument against creativity. It's an argument for directing creativity at the right things: campaigns, content, product innovation. The brand system is the frame. Great creativity works within it.

The most effective brand teams treat their guidelines not as creative constraints but as creative infrastructure — the thing that makes consistent output possible at scale, across teams and time zones.