Why Brand Coherency is More Important than Consistency for Modern Marketing

In the world of marketing, there are elements that are considered sacred: order of operations or systems of thinking that are designed to inform consistency of thought, scalability, and brand marketing…let’s call it hygiene. These habits and behaviors of the industry have led to a market perspective that is, let’s say, “rapidly expiring.” Consistency is one of those sacred marketing elements, a cornerstone of repeatable, scalable brand experiences. But here’s where it starts to break down: in a world that’s changing constantly, consistent has become synonymous with predictable. Worse, consistency is looking a lot like complacency.

The beginnings of brand consistency were rooted in a different marketing environment. Birthed in the world of consumer packaged goods and mass market TV, consistency enabled advertisers to influence the market, generate sales, and drive consumers to the storefront. But there’s no storefront anymore (at least not in enterprise technology). There’s no box on a shelf and marketers have to realize that the market has changed, and so have the rules.

If you were to poll most technology industry CMOs and corporate marketing teams, you’d find that very few were following those once fundamental tenants. Instead, comms rules are being built out of the practical need to apply each teams’ brand experience across programs, campaigns, geos, and to scale training for brand protection. Consistency of message, tone, and visual identity is maintained to ensure that the brand shows up “on point” across every region, campaign, and customer touchpoint. And yes, it does matter. Protect the brand—but don’t make the protections so rigid and inflexible that they suffocate the brand. By clinging to consistency—for consistency’s sake—you end up missing the whole point: living your brand’s values.

The goal isn’t to build a brand that’s so buttoned up and stagnant that it slips into the sea of sameness. It’s about creating a brand that’s alive. A brand that knows and lives its “why,” and uses that core foundation to inform every experience. Take a too consistent approach, and you miss the opportunity to unlock the creativity of your teams or empower them to think big, go bold, and shape the brand in relevant ways for different markets. Brands that do this lack authenticity, feel robotic, and ultimately lapse into forgettability. It’s a brand that shows up, but one that nobody cares about.

Let’s take a deeper look at what that means for brand marketing teams in the wild.

Adaptability Over Rigidity

Consistency often means clinging to the same tired patterns because, “That’s how we’ve always done it.” But a coherent approach? It lets you flex and adjust to new contexts, new audiences, new challenges, while staying true to your story. It’s about maintaining your spirit and dynamism, not your sameness.

Purposeful Alignment

Coherency ensures that every campaign, every communication, every customer touchpoint shows up with the same core purpose and values. Remember, you’re aligning your brand to what matters most to your audience. It’s the difference between sounding like a generic marketer and actually saying something that matters.

Emotional Connection

With coherency, you have room for substance, for storytelling, for bringing a little bit of life and real-world context to your brand strategy. It’s about listening to the world around you and committing your brand to a unified vision that feels authentic. People don’t connect with sameness—they connect with substance.

Real-World Relevance

The world changes. Trends shift. Customer expectations evolve. A coherent brand can adapt, can respond, and can stay fresh and relevant. Coherency allows for new expressions of your brand to take shape in ways that still hold true to the brand’s core identity.

Brands aren’t static; they’re living, breathing ecosystems that need to grow. Our tactics as marketeers have shifted to match the expanding personalization and customization practices in our marketing strategies—tactics that represent the antithesis of consistency. Coherency builds a foundation that can expand and innovate, integrating new ideas without losing its soul. It’s how you build long-term brand equity, by staying coherent, not confined. In the end, consistency is merely safe and small, and what we’ve become all too familiar with. Coherency? That’s where brands break out of the box, its where they stay relevant, and actually do or say meaningful things, by continuously unlocking their “why.”  It’s time for technology brands to start showing up with intent, emotion, and impact. Want your brand to matter? Break the rules, be bold, be coherent—and watch it come alive.