We used to build cathedrals

The old branding playbook preached a simple mantra: consistency above all. Craft a distinctive visual identity, plaster it everywhere, and watch recognition and mental availability (supposedly) soar¹.

This rigid, compliance-driven approach ignores a fundamental cognitive truth about how human connection and memory work: people connect with and remember emotions, not just visuals.

In today’s fragmented media landscape, this truth is more important than ever, because, let’s face it, cathedrals are beautiful, but they were built in and for another time. Iconic brands of today need to open the doors of their cathedrals and let consumers and culture in.

Everything, everywhere, all at once

Remember the days of meticulously crafted marketing funnels, carefully guiding consumers through each stage? In the past, at some steps of this funnel, mental availability and recognition were enough to drive purchase. But Gen Z broke that funnel. Raised on a constant stream of content, blurring all channels, they don't have time for complex brand stories.

Bombarded with choices from all sides, they make decisions in a heartbeat as your brand pops up in their feed, between the latest noodle bowl and new TikTok dance. So today, recognition is not enough to drive mental availability and purchase intent. Your brand now needs to be part of culture and consumers' lives across multiple channels to own mental real estate and drive purchase intent.

In this frantic environment, consumers can’t respond to complex stories or remember consistent assets, but they can make sense of emotions and sentiment when it relates to them. 

To capture their attention, brands need to cut through the noise with instant emotional resonance. This means moving beyond the outdated notion of iconic assets as mere visual identifiers to building multi-sensory, versatile design systems that can act as identifiers and emotional shortcuts to your brand, speaking to all the senses, everywhere and all at once.

Just let it go

Compliance simply cannot be the goal for brands when it comes to their visual assets because there are three major pitfalls in the consistency obsession:

• Diminishing returns on investment: despite pouring resources into maintaining strict visual consistency, only 1 in 7 brand assets achieve true distinctiveness². The numbers speak for themselves: this approach simply isn't working.
• Ignoring the power of the human experience: our brains are wired to remember experiences tied to emotions*. Brands that prioritise sterile and repetitive visuals over genuine feelings miss the opportunity to create lasting memories and even new brain structures* that drive recognition, mental availability, loyalty and growth.

“Mental availability requires developing a breadth of relevant memories to increase the size of the brand-related network in people’s brains, memories anchored to the brand through a brand’s distinctive assets.” Jenni Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute³

"Emotions play a crucial role in memory formation and retrieval, and storytelling is one of the most effective ways to evoke emotions in listeners." Paul Zak, Neuro-Economist⁴

• Missing out on remix culture and consumer collaboration: today's consumers crave authenticity and participation. They don't want to be talked at; they want to be part of the story. Culture is already all about remixing (think memes, Virgil Abloh…) but most brands still cling to rigid control and will find themselves out of touch with this collaborative spirit, unable to participate in and shape culture.

So, what are you waiting for? Stop complying and start creating

And if you're still in doubt, just look at brands like Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Chanel and even Kim Kardashian's Skims. They're ditching rigid asset usage, even when it comes to the logo (yes, the logo, the last bastion of consistency), in favour of creative logo expressions that meet their consumers where they are in culture. Because they understand that connection trumps consistency in the quest for mental availability. It’s time to make your assets work harder, and all you need to do is shift from consistency to versatility.

Landor developed a versatile brand design system for MYOM (Make Your Own Milk) that facilitates fluid storytelling directly linked to the benefit MYOM brings. MYOM’s unique concentrate shrinks plant-based milk by 88%, empowering consumers to make their own milk at home without compromising on taste. By shrinking the product, MYOM has also shrunk emissions linked to transport and packaging. In response, we shrunk every part of MYOM’s branding to convey a differentiated brand story that drives recognition and deeper connection.

Similarly, our versatile brand design system for SOS IUCN immediately engages audiences with an urgent call to action. The brand, a non-profit fighting for animal preservation, leverages its brand assets as emotional storytelling devices to remind everyone why they should care about species disappearing.

Building branded memories, not just brand guidelines:

Build distinctive strength and relevant meaning because they are the only things that matter when it comes to your assets. Building more than mere recognition will help you increase ROI.

Create principle-based systems, not rules: define clear roles for each asset. It’s a bit like managing a football team: you select the players and then define their role in the team, but, just like football players, your assets can still adapt to everything a game throws at them to create magic. We call this a versatility map, and for us, it all starts there.

Prioritise emotional storytelling: craft assets that evoke a spectrum of feelings, from joy and excitement to nostalgia and comfort. The more diverse the emotional palette, the more memorable the brand experience.

Think beyond visuals, embrace the senses: explore poly-sensory asset suites capable of creating experiences that engage on a deeper level. Think sound, texture, scent – anything that can create a more immersive and lasting impression across omnichannel⁴.

Brands of today need to embrace versatility and fluidity so that their iconic assets can evolve from mere brand signifiers into powerful storytellers and doers, capable of forging deep, memorable connections that transcend simple recognition. This way, they can build lasting memory structures in culture and across channels. All you need is a versatile asset system designed for today’s world.

The takeaway? Stop building brands for compliance and start building them for connection (to consumers and culture). Make them versatile, make them poly-sensory, and make them storytellers and doers that create emotional shortcuts to your brand. Because in a world saturated with noise, emotion is the key to unlocking true brand power and growth, and the iconic brands of tomorrow will not just be recognised, but deeply felt.

So, ask yourselves: are your asset systems versatile enough to drive growth in this new world? If the answer is no, give us a shout. We would be more than happy to help you build your brand’s own versatility map and journey towards true iconicity and growth.