Today’s loud branding makes subtlety feel powerful again.

Every Essay is being written with an album in mind, which is playing at the same time we are writing what you are reading right now, so for full experience we highly recommend going to your music provider and play “Pieces of a Man” By Gil Scott-Heron as you are reading this, promise it’s worth it. Ok back to the topic now!

Quite a statement, but who are the loud ones? The loud ones are those who are spending big bucks to attract an audience. Sometimes it’s forceful. It can be using influencers who clearly don’t match the audience they’re targeting, hyping sample sales, putting faces in places that have nothing to do with them just for the sake of traffic, and sometimes even doing rebranding that has nothing to do with the company values, ethics, or design language. Pouring millions into campaigns is not always the best tactic, to an extent of course. If you give someone 30k and the other person 1M, the person with 30k will know how to spend each dollar in a better way. Grandiose productions don’t always mean they have more impact.

It can also be paid product placements in certain videos. Yes, we are talking about the podcasters or influencers that’s filming their video or podcasts while sitting at a table with five different drink bottles placed there, thinking we won’t notice what you’re doing. Did you even taste it? Do you know what the brand stands for? That’s the forced loud branding we’re talking about, and it is not cutting it anymore.

On the other hand, a good example is Emma Chamberlain. If you take a random person to watch her podcast, do you think this person will know she has a coffee company? No. They won’t. You know why? Because it is not the main goal of the video. They’ll learn about it when she says she loves coffee so much, and suddenly it makes total sense for her to have a coffee company. It’s subtle. It’s true to her branding. It’s not forced.

Another loud branding issue is companies putting ads in the most unreasonable places (as to their audiences+timing). On YouTube, on X, on Instagram, on TikTok, you can find it anywhere. This is another thing executives often miss. If somebody is watching a YouTube video about a topic they find interesting, and you abruptly stop the video with your ad about a product that has nothing to do with what they’re watching, that person subconsciously develops a vendetta against your company. It might be the first time they heard about you. They might have actually used your product before. But now, after seeing your ad three times, great chances you might lose them as a customer. Congratulations, you paid money to lose customers. What did you get from that? Nothing. And most people skip the ad as soon as they can, so they aren’t listening anyway.

Subtlety wins.
Novelty wins.

People are tired of being bombarded with ads, loud branding, and forceful content.

Put two signs side by side. One in Times Square, one in Soho. Which do you think performs better in terms of attention span and actually taking the time to read it? If you think Times Square, congratulations, you’re still in the old school way of thinking. To think that one screen in a sea of hundreds, in the most hectic place in New York City, can bring you better results than a screen in a place like Soho is delusional. You get nothing other than that 15 second video, which you can actually purchase. You see where we’re going with it? (Look at the picture below for 5 seconds, let us know what do you see in the comments!)

Subtlety is powerful because it feels real, not forced. It’s quiet. If it captures your attention, you can’t let go of it. And you’ll see it for what it is, not what it’s being portrayed as.

Another real life example - McDonald’s Collabs. We need to talk about it for a second.

How many collabs do you think McDonald’s has had in the past five years? Travis Scott, J Balvin, BTS, Saweetie, Mariah Carey, Cardi and Offset, Angel Reese, Stormzy, and more. But has anybody stopped and asked why? Of course, tapping into culture, fan bases, and the rise of people spending money on collectibles. But who stopped to look at McDonald’s numbers? Exactly. Let us tell you something real quick. Only this year, McDonald’s recovered close enough to the revenue they had in 2014, which is 27.4B. (Source attached to the link - “companiesmarketcap.com”) Yes, McDonald’s primary task is acquiring more real estate, but this proves that some collabs are attempts to bump sales, and many of them make no sense.

You cannot defend this. Should we remind you of the Krispy Kreme and Crocs collab? like Jay Z said “This is food for thoughts, you do the dishes” - Intro, The Dynasty.

On the other side of the map you have innovation that is subtle and on point. The Reebok Shaq Pepsi three way collab. Shaq first signed with Reebok in 1992. There is lineage here. The design is also genius. The shoe can literally carry a can of Pepsi. The colorway, everything matches. It is subtle. It is on point. It makes sense.

Subtlety should be treated as a strategy in today’s world. If a product is good enough, people will find it, and there is no need to place it in their face nonstop. Especially not when you need to explain to your exec why the two million dollar concept campaign flopped, and your job is at risk.

If you had to walk away from this essay with one sentence, it is that loud doesn’t always win.

Also update -

Articles will be published Every Monday, Wednesday, And Friday!

They say that good things comes in threes...