these brands that are forgotten to please

We are thus witnessing the emergence of true “brand profiling”: a practice where companies, rather than carrying out real introspection work to understand their deep essence, attempt to construct the ideal brand profile on the surface. It’s an approach that prioritizes outward appearance over inner authenticity, as if a brand’s identity were just a collection of characteristics carefully selected from a catalog of “best practices.” This quest for the perfect profile paradoxically leads to standardization, where real singularity is sacrificed on the altar of a calculated and artificial image.

They sometimes practice real identity borrowing, picking here and there the ingredients that seem to make others successful: the humor of Burger King, the perceived quality of Picard, the visibility of Lustucru. As if the success of a branding was only a cooking recipe where it would be enough to mix the right ingredients to join the clan of winners.

Certainly this tendency towards mimicry is not totally irrational. When a brand succeeds in creating a strong cultural resonance, it demonstrates its understanding of contemporary expectations and its ability to respond to them. It is then natural that others seek to understand and be inspired by these successes. The difficulty lies in the subtle boundary between learning good practices and simply reproducing codes. The challenge is to know how to transform these observations into an authentic expression of one’s own identity, rather than falling into the trap of copy-paste marketing.

To concretely illustrate this approach to authenticity, the example of Amazon is particularly enlightening: “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards” (“We are not obsessed with the competition, but with the customer. We start from what the customer needs and we work backwards”), asserted Jeff Bezos.

This quote from the company’s founder perfectly sums up this philosophy. A radically different approach from the dominant reflex of benchmarking. Rather than scrutinizing the competition and trying to replicate their “best practices,” Amazon deliberately chooses to focus on one crucial question: what does the customer really want? This obsession with the customer, far from being a simple marketing posture, becomes a powerful vector of differentiation. By freeing itself from the constant gaze of the competition, the company gives itself the means to return to the essential: its own identity serving the real needs of its customers. It is by stopping wanting to be like others that a brand can best distinguish itself.

The other lever: working on the 3 temporalities of the brand

One of the solutions to escape this temptation lies in the three temporalities of the brand. Because every brand exists through a past, a present and a future. However, the branding approach is paradoxically often part of a logic of immediacy, favoring short-term impact to the detriment of a lasting vision. The example of Total Energies is revealing: its recent rebranding, with its chromatic palette evoking the codes of social networks, illustrates this tendency for brands to favor instant resonance. This approach reflects a certain form of anxiety on the part of brands regarding the passing of time, as if their relevance could only be expressed in the immediate present.

This quest for immediacy questions the construction of truly lasting brand identities, capable of transcending fads and ephemeral trends of the moment. We would have every interest in working around the archives of the brand, its temporal existence. Each brand has a history – not necessarily limited to the luxury sector – and would benefit from highlighting its DNA, even if it means making a shift towards more futuristic branding.

The past-present-future ingredients are exciting materials for creating the alchemy of a strong and powerful brand. It is in this temporal intersection that the true singularity of a brand often lies.

Find the courage to choose

Faced with this observation, it is urgent for companies to reconnect with their deep essence, their unique reason for being. Because yes, choosing is giving up. It means giving up the lukewarm comfort of transparency. It means abandoning this chameleon posture that seeks to blend into the landscape of trends.

This issue goes beyond the simple framework of the company. It is that of the very vitality of our economic ecosystem. As in any natural ecosystem, diversity is a source of wealth and resilience. In a world that is leaning dangerously towards standardization, brands have the responsibility to be sources of new inspiration, creators of authentic experiences. The survival of a market that can only flourish through diversity and sincere innovation depends on it.