More than just a marketing trend, branding is now a decisive factor for the sustainable growth of companies. A recent study by Conversion reveals that by 2025, between 80% and 90% of traffic that generates conversions for medium and large businesses comes from brand-related searches. This data reinforces the strategic role of brand building as a revenue generator, highlighting how the way the brand is perceived—and more importantly, how it is felt and processed in the consumer’s brain—directly influences business results.
Even so, many companies, especially those in expansion or repositioning phases, make mistakes that weaken their identity and reduce their market impact. Branding is not just about aesthetics or digital presence: it’s about consistency, authenticity, and alignment with the company’s values and audience expectations. This is where neurobranding comes in, allowing brands to build deep emotional and cognitive connections that go beyond the rational.
Check out five branding mistakes that deserve attention and learn how to avoid them:
1 – Choosing an inadequate archetype
Archetypes help shape the brand’s personality and communication style. When this choice doesn’t align with the business’s essence, the brand conveys a misleading image, causing confusion and alienating the audience. Therefore, it’s essential to choose an archetype aligned with the company’s values, purpose, and mission, genuinely reflecting who the brand truly is. To ensure this alignment, market research, combined with neurobusiness techniques like implicit association tests and emotional reaction analysis, can reveal whether the chosen archetype genuinely resonates in the subconscious of your audience, avoiding dissonances that harm brand perception.
2 – Lack of consistency in communication
Disjointed visual identity, tone of voice, and messaging across different channels harm brand perception. This inconsistency conveys an image of disorganization and lack of professionalism, undermining consumer trust. To avoid this, it’s crucial to ensure that all touchpoints—from the website to social media, advertising campaigns, and customer service—deliver a coherent message aligned with the brand’s identity. From a neurobranding perspective, inconsistency creates unnecessary cognitive load and can activate brain areas associated with distrust, making it harder to form positive memories and build lasting emotional connections.
3 – Ignoring audience feedback
A brand that doesn’t listen to its audience misses valuable opportunities for connection and evolution. Ignoring feedback and making decisions without considering consumer expectations can result in loss of relevance and engagement. Maintaining active listening channels, conducting periodic surveys, and analyzing data are fundamental practices to adjust communication and positioning according to audience interests. However, traditional research often only captures what consumers say they think. Neuroscience, with tools like eye-tracking and facial coding, goes further, revealing the unconscious emotional and cognitive reactions of the audience, offering deeper and more authentic insights into their true preferences and perceptions.
4 – Being too generic
Brands that don’t demonstrate personality tend to get lost in the competition. Lack of differentiation makes the brand forgettable and unattractive. It’s essential to rely on elements that make the brand unique—whether an authentic language, a striking visual identity, or well-defined values—and find ways to stand out with originality and clarity. Neurobranding is crucial here, as it helps identify the unique emotional and cognitive triggers your brand can activate in the consumer’s brain, ensuring it doesn’t just stand out but is memorable and creates an emotional connection that sets it apart from competitors.
5 – Not investing in a specialized company
Branding requires strategy, research, and technical expertise. Trying to manage it internally without the necessary know-how can result in poor choices and a weak, misaligned image. Partnering with professional branding experts or specialized firms can make all the difference in building a solid, cohesive brand ready for sustainable growth. The most advanced companies in branding today are those that integrate robust market research methodologies with neurobusiness principles, ensuring every branding decision is based not just on stated data but also on consumers’ brain and emotional reactions.
