Over the years, I’ve spent a good part of my life listening to brand owners and managers wrestle with challenges. Some are building something new. Others are running well-known names. Most are somewhere in between—passionate yet uncertain, trying to figure out why their brand doesn’t quite click yet.
That’s why I’ve come to believe that listening—and, more importantly, hearing—is one of the most essential skills a brand strategist can develop. There’s a study I always come back to: participants were asked to tap out simple songs like “Happy Birthday.” They assumed the listeners would easily recognize the melody. But in reality, only 2% could. That gap between what’s obvious to the tapper and what’s heard by the listener is the same gap that exists between brand teams and the strategist.
Before talking to a new client, I always remind myself of this study. It keeps me from assuming the client knows what I know. It also reminds me to ask better, more fundamental questions, to slow down, and to translate rather than explain.
The Universal Language of Struggle
No surprisingly, clients rarely use strategic language. They don’t say things like, “Our differentiation is eroding,” “Our brand equity is misaligned with cultural relevance,” or “We need to create new category entry points.” What they say sounds more like this:
“Nobody’s paying attention to us.” “We were once the coolest kids in the block, but we ran out of ideas, and it’s starting to show.” “People know us but don’t care about us anymore.”
Over time, I began to notice such complaints are systemic. These emotional cues signaled similar structural issues no matter where the client was based—Canada, France, or Japan. I kept hearing the same things again and again—brands feeling disconnected, less relevant, creatively stuck. That repetition made me pause. It took me a while to piece it together, but once I did, it changed how I approached brand diagnosis.
The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking like a strategist and started thinking like a psychologist. The patterns I was hearing didn’t just describe business problems — they sounded like developmental stages!
The way brands struggle reminded me of how people grow. Just like people, brands go through formative years, awkward transitions, bold peaks, and quiet declines. They gain confidence, lose relevance, rediscover themselves—or sometimes disappear entirely.
Some brands are just learning how to speak, making their first attempts to connect with an audience. Others are full of energy and identity but still figuring out who they want to be—like teenagers testing boundaries and finding their voice. Some are at the peak of their power, confident but cautious about maintaining their position. And others are slowly fading, trying to stay relevant in a world that has moved on without them.
This realization allowed me to understand that my client’s brands fall into one of the five stages below.
- The Infant: a new brand that’s still learning to express itself, full of potential but largely unknown
- The Adolescent: a brand with strong energy and emerging identity, testing how to grow without losing itself
- The Adult: a mature brand in its prime, widely recognized and still meaningful
- The Late Adult: a once-vibrant brand now fading, remembered but no longer chosen
- The Elderly: a brand whose story has stalled, present in name only, waiting for reinvention or closure
Each of these life stages comes with its own client complaints—signals that quietly reveal where the brand truly is. Then, I started to gather them as a kind of diagnostic tool.
Things Brand Owners Say – and What They Actually Mean
The Infant
In this earliest stage, brands are still forming language, structure, and identity. They’re filled with potential but haven’t yet earned visibility or trust. They’re often overcommunicating but under-connecting.
I’ve seen this stage countless times in early-stage businesses that feel like they’re doing everything right but can’t get traction. Think of early-stage startups or niche tech apps that haven’t quite landed yet—technically alive but brand-wise invisible.
When I encounter brands in this phase, they’re usually making a lot of noise but very little sense. Not because they lack passion—but because they haven’t yet carved out a distinct point of view. Their signals are too faint or too fuzzy to land.
In my experience, the way forward is not more exposure, but sharper definition. Before reaching for a bigger audience, I help brands get crystal clear on what they stand for and why anyone should care. Clarity and differentiation before scale—always.
Three quotes I often hear in this stage have become part of my 12-part diagnostic tool. They capture thereality of the Infant brand:
- “Nobody’s paying attention to us.” (Low awareness)
- “We don’t know what makes us special.” (Lack of differentiation)
- “People don’t get what we’re about when they hear our name.” (Unclear identity)
The Adolescent
Just like a teenager, these brands are full of energy and ambition. They’re trying things. They have ideas. They might even have early fans. But they haven’t yet crossed over into commercial maturity. They’re still being discovered. Still earning their first real moments of recognition.
What I’m really hearing in this stage is: the brand has a soul, but no system. A strong idea trapped in a weak structure. There’s no shorthand. No system. No mental hook.
My job is to help these clients focus intensely on defining and expressing what truly makes them different. That’s the absolute priority. But difference on its own isn’t enough — it has to mean something to someone. That’s why, alongside sharpening their distinctiveness, I push them to ground it in something people genuinely care about.
Once that connection is clear, we translate it into memory cues—symbols, phrases, gestures, stories. We start actively managing how the brand is perceived: is the promise clear? Is the experience consistent? Is the momentum visible?
At this stage, it’s not just about being different — it’s about being talked about, respected, and remembered. That’s how a promising niche player becomes a serious contender.
Over time, I’ve come to recognize three recurring statements from clients in this stage. I now use them to quickly understand where a brand might be stuck:
- “We’re different, but we can’t get people to see that and trust us.”
- “Our regular customers aren’t growing, and we’re scared to change too much.”
- “People can’t spot what makes us different right away.”
The Adult
This is the phase every brand aspires to — and also the one where they often start to drift without noticing. These are brands that have made it: well-known, well-liked, and meaningfully different. But with that success comes pressure — pressure to protect the lead, not lose ground, and avoid taking unnecessary risks.
What I often see in this stage is a slow erosion of imagination. The brand is solid, but safe. Too much optimization, not enough provocation. They’re no longer building the brand — they’re maintaining it. And that’s when cracks begin to form.
My role here is to stretch the brand’s comfort zone without breaking its coherence. The goal is to renew ambition — to act like a challenger again, but with the wisdom of an incumbent.
There’s one sentence I hear again and again from brands in this space:
- “We’re the big name in our business, but we’re running out of ideas and it’s starting to show.”
The Late Adult
These brands are still present in people’s lives — but mostly as habit. They’ve become background noise. There’s name recognition, but not much enthusiasm. You might still find them on shelves or in airports or as part of your childhood memories, but very little about them feels current.
I call this the “brand autopilot phase.” Everything still functions, but nothing inspires. These brands are living off mental availability, not emotional resonance.
The solution isn’t always reinvention — sometimes it’s rekindling. I work with teams to rediscover the symbolic assets that once made them magnetic, and then reframe them for a market that’s changed. But rekindling isn’t passive. It often requires bold action: evolving the product, repositioning the message, finding new relevance, or even shifting to a different audience altogether. In this stage, nostalgia alone won’t carry the brand forward — momentum must be rebuilt.
Compalints I hear most often hear from brands in this phase are:
- “People know who we are but don’t think about us much.”
- “We’re boring now—nothing stands out about us.”
The Elderly
These are brands with a past, but not a future—at least not in their current form. Often they were once beloved, dominant, or even iconic. But at some point, the world changed, but they didn’t. Their voice stayed the same while the culture moved on. When I talk to clients in this phase, there’s often a deep internal pride mixed with quiet external confusion. They’re not sure why their old playbook isn’t working anymore.
I’ve seen these brands fall into a kind of symbolic inertia. Everyone remembers them, but no one desires them. They’re caught between nostalgia and irrelevance — known for what they used to be, not what they are.
In my experience, the hardest part is admitting the story no longer works. Most teams start with minor tweaks—adjusting a logo, rewriting some copy—but what’s really needed is deeper: a fundamental rethink of the brand’s purpose and promise. This stage often demands bolder moves—total reinvention, or finding a highly specific, defensible niche. And if that’s not viable, it may be time to consider sunsetting the brand with intention and grace.
There are three phrases I keep hearing from clients in this stage. I’ve heard them so often, with such consistency, that they’ve become part of my go-to diagnostic tool:
- “People know us but don’t care about us anymore.”
- “Our story sounds old, and we’re stuck on what to say now.”
- “We’re out there, but customers pick other brands.”
Why This Matters
A brand strategy project begins with a diagnosis, while clients start with a feeling—a fog, a low-grade anxiety that something isn’t working as it used to.
That’s where this diagnostic tool comes in. It doesn’t just help me get my bearings; it helps clients feel seen. It gives them language for the tension they’ve been carrying—often without knowing what to call it. The greatest comfort, I’ve found, often comes from realizing you’re not alone. When clients recognize that others have stood where they stand now, and that there’s a way forward, the anxiety softens.
Once they recognize their situation, we can move past confusion and begin the real work: defining what comes next.
If this resonates, I’d be happy to explore how this can be used in a workshop, brand audit, or strategy project. After all these years, I’ve learned that strategy isn’t about theory—it’s about helping people see clearly.
Let me know if you’d like a visual version of this: a one-page diagnostic map or workshop handout. It’s yours.