As we jump from recap to recap these days I’m gonna spare you the 12 things I learned in 2025 and instead share the 8 mistakes I’m still seeing brands make. The good news is these are all fixable. The better news is a lot of brands are doing it so even one fix puts you ahead of the game.

The Brand Mistakes to Leave Behind in 2025

1. Confusing brand with brand marketing

We need to talk about this again (I wrote about the difference back in 033). Companies drop millions on campaigns while their internal brand is a mess. The team doesn’t know what your company stands for, why it exists, or how it’s different from the competition, and it doesn’t know how to show up in the world. Your brand, first and foremost, is for your team. It teaches them how to go to market.

Too many teams learn the hard way that this isn’t just colors and logo, and that you can't market your way out of a broken brand. Fix how you show up internally , then tell the world about it.

2. Building for everyone instead of someone

"We help businesses grow" - cool, so does everyone else. The best brands? They're ruthlessly specific. They know exactly who they're for and, more importantly, who they're not for. They’ve made decisions around it and built a business with that focus.

You can't make everyone happy so you shouldn't try. Focus on your audience—only your audience—and make them fall in love with you. Show up where they hang out, use the same language, make them take notice. Otherwise you’re just wasting everyone’s time with a super generic message that won’t ever break through.

3. Perfecting the process instead of the outcome

This one may actually be my fault. For years I've been telling you how important having a repeatable process is. It creates predictability and accountability but creating a process isn't a set it and forget it job. It needs to evolve as the team, goals, and work evolve. Sometimes you gotta kill what works to build something better.

The most important part to any process is understanding why you need it in the first place. Most processes come from a moment in time which means they’re built for your business at that point. If you’re running the same process for months or years without any tweaks it’s time to take a look at your business because either things aren’t changing (which means they’re not growing) or you’re stuck in your ways (which means you’re creating a bottleneck). Either way, it’s time to fix the process.

4. Thinking brand work is separate from business work

Your brand isn't your logo. It's your operating system. It's how every employee makes decisions. It's what makes you worth noticing before you spend a dime on marketing. And it belongs in your product, service, sales process, and customer experience. Pretending it's an art project is why your customers have no idea what you stand for. Hiding it in marketing keeps it siloed.

With products and services becoming commoditized, brand is your new (and old) moat. It’s what will make your company the obvious choice over the competition. It’s what no one else can steal (if they can, you don’t have anything). Your brand makes you money. Full stop.

5. Not teaching your employees what you stand for

Think it's just your customers that need to know who you are? Nah playa! Your internal team needs to understand why you exist (beyond generating ARR) and that starts with your unique POV. Can anyone on your team share why your business is actually different without leaning on prices, features, or discounts?

This isn’t as simple as your VP of Brand standing up at an all-hands and talking at everyone about the brand, it’s about giving everyone actual access to it. It’s setting up a Brand HQ, hosting road shows, creating specific documentation and how-to’s for every team, collecting feedback. If we’re gonna peddle the classic “everyone owns the brand” line then we need to give everyone access, accountability, and ownership over it.

6. Rebranding without a plan

You can't just update your logo, flip your website and consider it a job done. Like any important launch, rebrands need a plan. And if that plan doesn't include self-service tools, training and enablement, or easy to use guidelines then you just wasted a ton of time and money because it's going down.

Rebrands signal a shift to the market that should come with an updated POV, new product, or different target. It’s not something you do because “nothing is working.” A rebrand will make a good strategy great, but it can’t fix poor planning.

7. Treating differentiation like The Wild West

Did you know that differentiation isn't just about your competitors? It's about your own brand too. I see so many brands wasting money to stand out and end up so all over the place that even their customers have no idea who they are. You need to create a brand that's consistent so that when you pop, you POP!

Think of it this way. If you’re constantly changing how you look and what you say, nobody is going to notice when you do it next. By building in consistency you’re creating a steady drumbeat so that when you do do something different, everyone takes notice.

8. Confusing consistency with sameness

But won't everything else look the same? Only if you let it. Sameness is the biggest complaint I hear when talking about consistency. Does Apple look the same from product to product? It's one of the most consistent branded houses in the world but you still know the difference. Sameness only occurs in poorly constructed brands.

If you’re running into it, it’s time to step back and look at what’s going on at the brand strategy level. Maybe your brand was built for a different, simpler era of the company. Now it needs to deal with more competition, more distractions, and more channels. It’s tough out there, I know, but that doesn’t mean we have to be content with the way things are.

What are you gonna do next year?

I know some of you are thinking: "Efffff, we're doing most of these." Join the club (it's a big one)...

Here's the thing though—every single brand that's crushing it right now was making at least some of these same mistakes a year ago. The only difference? They stopped making excuses and started making changes.

The brands that will win in 2026 aren't the ones with perfect brands. They're the ones willing to admit things are broken and actually fix them.

Need help identifying these issues? Check out the OhSnap! Brand Systems Audit. It’s an opportunity for us to come in and help you figure out what’s standing in your way of scaling—because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Announcing the OhSnap! Brand Systems Audit

If you still have Q4 budget you need to spend, this is a great way to make sure you start 2026 on the right foot.