More than just a marketing trend, branding is now a decisive factor for the sustainable growth of companies. A recent survey by Conversion reveals that, by 2025, between 80% and 90% of traffic that generates conversions for medium and large companies will come from brand-related searches. This data reinforces the strategic role of brand building as a revenue-generating driver, highlighting that how a brand is perceived and, more importantly, how it is felt and processed in the consumer’s brain, directly influences business results.
Yet many companies, especially those in the process of expanding or repositioning, make mistakes that weaken their identity and reduce their market impact. Branding isn’t just about aesthetics or digital presence: it’s about consistency, authenticity, and alignment with the company’s values and audience expectations. And this is where neurobranding comes in, enabling 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 inappropriate archetype
Archetypes help shape a brand’s personality and its communication style. When this choice doesn’t align with the business’s essence, the brand conveys a misleading image, causing confusion and alienating the public. Therefore, it’s crucial to choose an archetype that aligns 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 such as implicit association testing and emotional reaction analysis, can reveal whether the chosen archetype truly resonates with your audience’s subconscious, avoiding dissonances that harm brand perception.
2 – Lack of consistency in communication
Disjointed visual identity, tone of voice, and messaging across channels harm brand perception. This inconsistency conveys an image of disorganization and unprofessionalism, compromising consumer trust. To avoid this, it’s essential to ensure that all touchpoints, from the website to social media, including advertising campaigns and customer service, convey a coherent message aligned with the brand’s identity. From a neurobranding perspective, inconsistency creates unnecessary cognitive load and can activate areas of the brain associated with distrust, hindering the formation of positive memories and the building of a lasting emotional bond.
3 – Ignoring the audience’s opinion
A brand that doesn’t listen to its audience misses out on valuable opportunities for connection and growth. Ignoring feedback and making decisions without considering consumer expectations can result in a loss of relevance and engagement. Maintaining active listening channels, conducting periodic surveys, and analyzing data are fundamental practices for adjusting 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, allows us to go further, revealing audiences’ unconscious emotional and cognitive reactions, offering deeper and more authentic insights into their true preferences and perceptions.
4 – Being too generic
Brands that lack personality tend to get lost among the competition. A lack of differentiation makes the brand forgettable and unattractive. It’s important to invest in elements that make the brand unique, whether it’s 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 not only stands out but is memorable and creates an emotional connection that differentiates it from the competition.
5 – Not investing in a specialized company
Branding requires strategy, research, and technical knowledge. Attempting to manage it internally, without the necessary expertise, can result in poor choices and a fragile, misaligned image. Relying on the support of specialized professionals or companies can make all the difference in building a solid, cohesive brand that’s poised for sustainable growth. The most advanced companies in the field of branding today are those that integrate robust market research methodologies with neurobusiness principles, ensuring that every brand decision is based not only on declared data but also on the consumer’s cerebral and emotional reactions.
