Brand Evolution vs. Brand Drift: How to Tell the Difference

This year, I’m helping a client in the backyard renovation industry update their company’s brand. Several years ago, the company began as a group of high school boys mowing lawns for pocket money. Today, they install pools, ponds, and patio tile to create luxurious backyard oases at tens of thousands—and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands—of dollars per lawn. The brand, initially centered on the founder’s identity, no longer fits their operating model. To keep scaling their reputation and profits, their brand must evolve. 

Brand evolution is natural. It happens when a company grows or the market shifts. Those who have managed these growing pains successfully are still around to tell us about it: the Coca-Cola Company, IBM, Goldman Sachs, Brooks Brothers, and DuPont—to name a few. That’s very different from brand drift, however.

Brand Evolution as Market Adaptation

Imagine your company as a boat. It has a purpose and a destination, trying to get somewhere and achieve some goals. It starts off by using a sail to catch the winds of the market.

The market, however, is fickle. Sometimes it blows left, sometimes right. Sometimes it doesn’t blow at all, and you have to opt for an oar or an outboard motor to keep moving forward. 

All of these things—the sail, the oar, and the outboard motor—represent your company’s products, services, and marketing. Maybe you sold horses in 1890, but by 1910, everyone wants cars. So à la Henry Ford, you get rid of the horses and start producing cars. Then 2010 rolls around, and the market suddenly demands electric cars. So you take out the fuel-based engines and install electric ones. Much has changed, but your values and purpose remain intact.

That’s evolution: savvy, intentional adaptation to the market.

Brand Drift as Internal Abdication

Drift, on the other hand, occurs when companies lose sight of their identity, values, and purpose along the way. In my boat analogy, these aspects of the corporation are represented by the compass. The compass allows the crew to keep the boat on course to its destination no matter how chaotically the market winds blow. When companies struggle with big, strategic decisions, they look to their goals and values to provide direction.

In the context of business, it’s exceedingly easy to mistake the sail for the compass, allowing a fickle market to pull you away from your core identity and purpose. This is where drift occurs. I’ve seen it embodied in countless executives obsessed with mirroring their competitors’ marketing tactics or CEOs who change their company’s service offerings every few months. Brand is just the entity name on the incorporation paperwork, nothing more. The look, feel, voice, and values change with every market trend. It’s brand identity by mad libs. 

Warning: Iceberg Ahead

Brand drift is insidious, because it can happen slowly, almost imperceptibly. A few phrases altered here, a core value abandoned there. Suddenly, employees wake up to a company that looks, sounds, and feels entirely different. The culture is different, too, and almost never in a good way—because it was shaped by the unchecked whims and anxieties of those at the helm. Now, everyone is now lost at sea and demanding answers: What is our destination now? Has our purpose changed? Are we adhering to the same values in our operations? Do we still know which clients we’re serving?

Don’t Pee on My Leg and Say It’s Raining

Some have tried to convince me that their brand drift is actually evolution, that they’re simply adapting to the times. But I’ve been around long enough to know the difference between adaptation and abdication when I see it. If you’re abandoning what your company believes, says, and does for a convenient cash grab (looking at you, Allbirds), you’re drifting. You are Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride eating scrambled eggs before a 3-day hike through the mountains, even though you despise scrambled eggs and the thought of spending time in nature without WiFi and an enclosed shower makes you heave. But, hey, bae is hunky, and you’re in the most convenient proximity to win his affections (and wallet).

In Glorious Summation

Brand evolution is a long game. It involves strategic forethought anchored in real, heartfelt values expressed in a distinct voice. Changes to that core identity—at the rare times they must occur—are undertaken with the utmost care.

Brand drift is a short game. It’s reactionary and undisciplined, driven by wishful thinking. It sends smart people running away à la Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride.

And like the men Roberts abandons at the altar, brand drift will eventually leave you adrift. When the economic winds change direction—as they always do—you’ll have nothing solid to cling to. And that is where many companies flounder and die.