Branding, decisions, and the quiet cost of inconsistency
By Joachim ter Haar – Managing Partner, Skriptor
Most companies don’t realize their branding is failing — because nothing looks broken. Performance is fine. Teams are capable and engaged. Decisions get made.
And yet, over time, value quietly leaks away.
After twenty years advising global organizations on naming and brand architecture, I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself. Not because of bad strategy, but because of how decisions accumulate without a shared logic behind them.
When “Good” Decisions Don’t Add Up
The problem isn’t indecision. If anything, it’s abundance. Every day, decisions are made: quickly, confidently, and usually with good intent. Without a common portfolio framework, each one gets optimized for the moment: a launch, a target, a manager’s priority. Each choice makes sense in isolation. Together, they drift.
And this isn’t a problem reserved for large, complex organizations. Smaller, fast‑moving companies experience it just as easily — alignment is assumed, not structured. Five teams or fifty, the pattern looks identical: well‑intended decisions that make sense individually but compete collectively. That’s not mismanagement. It’s a lack of shared gravity, the invisible pull that keeps decisions aligned across time and context.
How the Drift Becomes Visible
At Skriptor, we manage the global Naming Desk of a major lighting company. Within three weeks, we received three requests for new sub‑brand names: one for B2B outdoor, one for B2B indoor, one for B2C decorative. Individually, each was logical. But how many SmartVisions can one portfolio sustain before it begins to blur?
That’s how coherence erodes quietly, through smart, isolated choices that accumulate into noise.
It becomes visible when the business model shifts. Advisory firms start to productize. Product firms move toward ecosystems. Boundaries blur; categories overlap. Suddenly the company is speaking to the market in several dialects at once.
You can almost hear it:
“We sell products.” “We sell solutions.” “We sell platforms.”
But in reality: “We sell confusion.”
Changing markets don’t create this misalignment, they expose it.
Naming: The Visible Symptom
Naming is where the problem surfaces. Not because naming is special, but because it forces commitment. Names draw lines. They make temporary decisions permanent. We once audited a client portfolio and found 275 sub‑brands, each with its own legacy, style and logic, created independently. When asked if a system existed, the answer was: “Yes — we call it decentralized democracy.” Those weren’t careless decisions; they were situationally optimal ones. But together they produced incoherence.
And that’s usually when someone says, “We have a naming problem.” But naming isn’t the problem. It’s the mirror that makes the problem visible. If Mr Heineken had been called Philips, the world would be drinking Philips beer, illuminated by Heineken lights. The name itself isn’t the issue; it’s the business and organizational logic behind it.
The Real Leakage
When portfolio decisions are weighed inconsistently, branding and marketing don’t correct the imbalance, they amplify it. Campaigns still perform. Products still launch. But each initiative must rebuild context from scratch.
Investment doesn’t compound. Momentum resets. The brand is always warming up, never accelerating. Internally, teams spend time aligning instead of building. Externally, customers experience overlap and hesitation. None of this causes immediate failure. Results can remain acceptable for years. That’s why the problem is so often ignored.
What leaks first isn’t revenue, it’s compounding advantage. And once you’ve lost that, recovery is slow and expensive.
Brands Don’t Break Overnight
Strong organizations empower people to decide. The real challenge lies in aligning how those decisions are weighed.
So the question isn’t: “Is our branding good?” It’s: “Are our decisions adding up?”
In my experience, successful brands aren’t managed, they’re cultivated. They function through principles that guide decision‑making continuously, not intermittently. Guidelines alone don’t create coherence; shared judgment does.
Brands are living systems. They must be fed, guided, refreshed, and protected, not occasionally fixed. When nothing feels visibly broken, that’s when alignment is most at risk. And by the time it shows, it’s already costing you momentum you’ll never fully recover.
About the author
Joachim ter Haar is Managing Partner at Skriptor, an international naming and brand‑strategy agency based in Amsterdam and Stockholm. He helps organizations worldwide design and govern brand portfolios that build clarity, coherence, and long‑term value.
(Follow Joachim for perspectives on how empowered organizations can make brand decisions that truly add up.)
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