Why Brands That Do Not Understand People End Up Talking to Themselves

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By Cristian Saracco, Ph.D., Partner Allegro 234

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This article is intended as a friendly approach to one of the central ideas of my doctoral thesis: the relationship between people and brands begins long before any purchase takes place. It begins in a subtler space, where values, intuition, social context, personal aspirations and mutual recognition quietly mingle.

It is worth starting by agreeing on a few concepts, because branding, psychology and sociology are used so often that they can become rather worn coins: still valuable, but with their features slightly rubbed away.

When we speak of branding, we are speaking of the way an organisation turns its strategy, culture and promise into a recognisable experience. Branding is what a company means, how it behaves and what place it occupies in people’s lives. The logo helps, tone of voice helps, design helps, but the brand lives in the whole system: product, service, internal culture, commercial decisions, experience, memory and reputation.

A strong brand acts rather like an operating system: it organises the way an organisation thinks, decides, expresses itself and delivers value.  

Psychology enters the scene because people do not choose through cold calculation alone. We perceive, associate, remember, feel, anticipate and justify. Quite often, the mind explains with great elegance what the body had already decided rather quickly. The human mind looks for shortcuts to reduce complexity. When they work well, brands help us decide with less effort and greater confidence.

Sociology adds a truth to marketing’s romantic individualism: no one decides entirely alone. We choose from within communities, cultures, professions, generations, neighbourhoods, families, networks, conversations and groups of belonging. Even when someone believes they are being radically original, they are usually following codes shared by a fairly recognisable tribe. Sometimes the tribe wears white trainers and talks about innovation; sometimes it wears a navy suit and talks about governance. Each has its rituals.

In this sense, biographical segmentation helps us look at people in greater depth. Instead of reducing them to age, sex, income or postcode, it observes their values, journeys, aspirations, ways of understanding authority, wellbeing, achievement, freedom, change or belonging. Socio-demographic segmentation tells us where someone is.

Biographical segmentation tries to understand where they are looking at the world from.

Intuition, in this context, deserves a defence. We are not talking about mystical inspiration or “energies” in PowerPoint form. Intuition can be understood as a non-executive rational act: a quick response based on previous learning, accumulated patterns and associations that have not yet passed through the conscious office of reason. First comes an inclination, a sense of trust, a warning or an affinity. Then comes the explanation. Reason, terribly dignified, signs off the paperwork.

Ambidextrous strategy completes the frame. A brand needs continuity and change at the same time. It must preserve what gives it identity, credibility and recognition, while developing the capabilities to adapt to new conversations, expectations and contexts.

A rigid brand becomes a museum piece. A liquid brand becomes unrecognisable. Ambidexterity allows a brand to sustain a clear identity while moving intelligently.

Brands Begin Before Transaction

For decades, many companies looked at the brand from the last scene of the film: the purchase. They asked what makes someone choose, buy, repeat or recommend. That view is useful, but incomplete. The relationship with a brand often begins earlier, in a silent conversation where the person detects signs of affinity.

Before buying, someone may admire a brand, follow it, reject it, recommend it, research it, imitate it, mock it or use it as a cultural reference. There are brands with which people have relationships without ever having bought anything from them. Think of Ferrari, Patagonia, Apple, Nike, Tesla, Rolex, IKEA, Lego or even certain universities, cities and cultural movements. The relationship begins in meaning.

The purchase may be a consequence, not the origin.

This matters because it forces us to change the question. The issue is not only “how do we sell more?”, but “why would someone want to have a conversation with this brand?”. And conversation does not necessarily mean explicit dialogue on social media. It means an exchange of meaning. A person sees a brand and understands something: about the company, about the category, about other users and also about themselves.

Brands operate as mediators between what the organisation proposes and what people desire, fear, value or imagine. That is why a brand can be technically impeccable and emotionally irrelevant. It can also be visually attractive and socially deaf. And that is where the corporate monologue begins: the company speaks, publishes, launches campaigns, optimises content, measures impressions… and people keep walking past as if avoiding an insurance salesman at an airport.

This evolution can be understood as a shift from the brand as a functional identifier to the brand as a strategic and conversational platform. In other words, the brand stops being the label at the end of the process and becomes one of the ways in which the organisation relates to people and society.

The evolution of branding shows how brands move from identifying products to organising relationships between people, organisations and shared values.

Deciding Quickly Without Feeling Reckless

Brand psychology studies how people perceive, remember, feel and decide in relation to a brand. A known brand reduces uncertainty.

A coherent brand reduces effort. A trusted brand reduces risk. A desired brand adds meaning.

In saturated markets, deciding is tiring. There are too many options, too many promises and too many companies saying practically the same thing in a different typeface. Faced with that excess, the brain tries to simplify. The brand appears as a mental shortcut: a way of organising information, anticipating experience and making decisions without having to review everything from scratch.

That shortcut is built through repetition, consistency and experience. Repetition helps recognition. Consistency helps trust. Experience confirms or destroys what has been promised. Brand memory is formed in that combination.

The problem begins when companies think they can hack the human mind with scattered tricks: an “emotional” colour, an inspiring phrase, a video with piano music and a noble word in capital letters. Psychology can help us understand people; used poorly, it becomes persuasive costume jewellery.

A psychologically strong brand understands three things. First, people need clear signals. Second, trust accumulates through small interactions. Third, the most valuable emotion for a business is not always excitement; very often it is reassurance. The reassurance of knowing what to expect.

That is why coherence is so powerful. Coherence means that promise, culture, experience and behaviour move in the same direction. When a brand says one thing and does another, the mind registers friction. That friction consumes trust. And when trust runs out, the brand can continue communicating, but its words carry less weight.

No One Chooses from an Island

Psychology explains what happens inside the person. Sociology explains what happens around them. A brand lives in the mind, but it also circulates through conversations, communities and cultural codes.

People use brands to solve practical needs, but also to position themselves socially. Some brands communicate belonging. Others communicate judgement. Others communicate status, rebellion, restraint, conscience, efficiency, modernity, tradition or independence. Even the rejection of certain brands communicates something.

Saying “I would never buy that” is also a way of constructing identity.

Sociology helps us understand that the brand has a public dimension. Even when consumption is individual, meaning is shared. Someone may buy a phone, a wine, a jacket, a university, a bank or a consultancy for functional reasons. Yet that decision is also influenced by what that choice says within their social world.

This is where communities become fundamental. A professional community, for instance, shares codes about which brands are credible, what language feels legitimate, what aesthetic conveys seriousness, what kind of innovation seems reliable and which promises sound suspicious. A community of young creatives, a financial community, an academic community, a technological community or a sustainability-oriented community reads brands through different criteria.

The brand, then, needs to speak the deeper language of the community it wishes to serve. That language includes words, but also silences, priorities, symbols, tensions and expectations. Some brands fail because they communicate well in the abstract and poorly in context. They say something correct, but in the wrong place, with the wrong tone or from insufficient legitimacy.

Rather like a family dinner: a sentence may be brilliant, but if it comes after the third unfortunate remark, no one hears it in quite the same way.

The Invisible Ground of the Relationship

People connect with brands they perceive as close to their values, even when that perception is not always conscious or verbalised. Values such as security, freedom, achievement, care, belonging, innovation, tradition, equality, efficiency, beauty, responsibility or exploration act as filters.

A brand may represent progress for one group and threat for another. It may symbolise freedom in one market and frivolity in another. It may be seen as aspirational by some and pretentious by others. Value does not lie only in the company’s intention; it emerges in the relationship between what the company does and how people interpret it from their own cultural frame.

That is why corporate values written on a website achieve very little when they do not appear in observable decisions. People believe in what they see repeated under pressure. A company that declares “closeness” and is inaccessible; that declares “innovation” and punishes every mistake; that declares “sustainability” and operates through an extractive logic; that declares “people at the centre” and treats employees like office consumables, is training the market to distrust it.

Real values are visible in priorities. In what is funded. In what is measured. In what is rewarded. In what is tolerated. In what is corrected. In the way a complaint is handled. In how someone is dismissed. In how a product is designed. In how the company responds when doing the right thing costs money.

One useful way to make this visible is to map values along two cultural tensions: traditional versus secular authority, and relative survival versus relative wellbeing. This kind of map helps us see that values are not decorative words, but organising forces that shape expectations, behaviours and affinities with brands.

This map helps visualise how different values cluster around cultural tensions that influence how people interpret brands, trust organisations and build affinity.

The brand translates those values into experience. When the translation is clear, trust appears. When the translation is confused, noise appears. When the translation contradicts the promise, cynicism appears.

And cynicism is expensive. It may not always show up in this quarter’s profit and loss account, but it gradually erodes preference, internal pride, recommendation, credibility and willingness to pay.

Looking at Whole People

Traditional segmentation remains useful. Age, geography, income level or occupation provide valuable information. The problem begins when description is mistaken for understanding.

Two people of the same age, city and income level may have radically different relationships with a brand. One may seek security and institutional backing. Another may seek independence and change. One may value tradition. Another may value disruption. One may be attracted to brands that express achievement. Another to brands that express care, balance or belonging.

Biographical segmentation works on that deeper layer.

It sees life as a journey, not as a CRM record. It asks about values, aspirations, tensions, accumulated experiences, cultural references and ways of interpreting wellbeing.

This is especially important in a world where identities are less linear. People combine roles that once seemed separate. The same individual may be conservative in financial decisions, exploratory in technology, activist on environmental issues, traditional in family matters and experimental in leisure. Rigid categories fall short.

A brand needs to understand those combinations. People no longer fit comfortably into simple boxes. And when a company insists on putting them there, communication starts to sound like one of those forms that asks you to tick “other” because it has no idea what to do with reality.

Biographical segmentation allows brands, value propositions and experiences to be designed with greater relevance because it connects with more stable motivations. Fashions change. Channels change. Expressive codes change. Values evolve, but they have greater continuity. Understanding them helps build deeper relationships that depend less on immediate stimulus.

The Quick Judgement That Comes from Far Away

Intuition has a poor reputation in business environments because it sounds insufficiently rigorous. Yet many important decisions combine analysis and intuition.

Well-educated intuition condenses experience. It detects patterns before we can fully explain them.

In relation to brands, intuition appears when someone quickly feels trust, distance, interest or rejection. That reaction may come from previous experiences, reputation, symbols, language, design, price, social context or accumulated stories. The person may simply say, “I like it” or “I am not convinced”. Behind that brief phrase lies a considerable amount of processed information.

Brands work in that space. Not because they seek to manipulate, but because the human relationship with symbols works that way. A brand activates memories, expectations and associations. The name, tone, staff behaviour, packaging, website, product architecture, pricing policy and way of apologising all build intuition.

Intuition also operates inside organisations. A leadership team often knows, before having all the data, that a brand is moving away from its essence, that a campaign does not sound credible, that an innovation fits or that a visual change feels cosmetic. The problem comes when that intuition lacks method. Intuition needs contrast, research, conversation and strategy. Intuition without discipline becomes whim. Discipline without intuition becomes bureaucracy.

Serious branding unites both. It listens to the data, interprets the symbols, observes behaviours and makes decisions with judgement.

Sustaining Identity While the World Changes

Brands live with permanent tension. They need to be recognisable and, at the same time, remain relevant. If they change too much, they lose meaning. If they change too little, they lose connection. Ambidextrous strategy allows that tension to be managed without falling into extremes.

An ambidextrous brand protects its core: what makes it credible, distinctive and valuable. At the same time, it adapts its expressions, propositions, experiences and conversations to new realities. Identity provides continuity. Adaptation provides the future.

This perspective is especially important in times of accelerated cultural, technological and social change. Artificial intelligence transforms service expectations. Sustainability changes criteria of legitimacy. New generations question traditional forms of authority. Polarisation forces brands to judge more carefully when to speak, how to speak and from what evidence to speak. Content saturation turns attention into a scarce resource and trust into a strategic asset.

An ambidextrous brand knows how to distinguish essence from format. Essence must be stable. Format can evolve. Purpose must orient. Language can be updated. Values must be lived. Campaigns can change. The promise must be recognisable. Experiences must improve.

Companies that fail to make this distinction usually make one of two mistakes. Some turn the brand into a relic and call rigidity coherence. Others change their story every season and call lack of judgement agility. In both cases, the brand loses strength.

Ambidexterity demands leadership. Maintaining coherence and change at the same time requires deciding what to preserve, what to abandon, what to transform and what to explore. This cannot be solved with a workshop full of Post-it notes, although we must admit that the humble Post-it has brought more comfort to consultancy than several minor religions.

The Brand as the Company’s Operating System

When a brand is properly understood, it stops being a final layer of communication and becomes a logic of management. It helps decide which products to develop, which experiences to design, which talent to attract, which culture to build, which partnerships to accept, which customers to prioritise and which behaviours to avoid.

The brand as operating system connects business, culture and market. It prevents each area from improvising its own version of the company.

Marketing promises closeness, operations optimises distance, human resources talks about talent, finance only sees cost, sales offers almost anything to close the quarter and customer service receives the fire wearing headphones. Without a shared brand as a decision-making criterion, the organisation fragments.

A strong brand aligns. It provides a common framework for action. It makes the external promise and internal culture feed one another. When that happens, the brand gains credibility because it no longer depends on isolated messages. The whole company begins to communicate, even when it is not formally communicating.

This is one of the great differences between superficial branding and strategic branding. The superficial version asks: “How do we want to appear?” The strategic version asks: “What must we be able to sustain?” The first question produces campaigns. The second transforms organisations.

Influence with Responsibility

The combination of branding, psychology and sociology brings with it an obvious responsibility. If brands influence decisions, perceptions and social conversations, that influence must be managed with care.

Understanding people does not authorise exploiting them.

Knowing their fears, desires or aspirations allows better propositions, more human experiences and more valuable relationships to be designed. It can also be used to pressure, confuse or manipulate. The difference lies in intention, evidence and transparency.

A brand with conscience understands that its impact goes beyond the sale. It affects habits, expectations, relationships, imaginaries and forms of consumption. This does not mean adopting a grandiose moral pose or turning every campaign into a sermon. It means taking responsibility for what is promised and for what is provoked.

Conscience becomes especially relevant because people are better at detecting incoherence. There is more information, more public conversation and greater ability to compare. Brands no longer control the story as they once did. They can guide, activate and participate. The full conversation also belongs to people.

That is why sincerity has become a competitive advantage. A sincere brand does not need to appear perfect. It needs to be legible, consistent and responsible. It can recognise tensions. It can explain decisions. It can show progress. It can admit limits. That maturity generates more trust than staged perfection.

Corporate perfection usually smells of freshly opened plastic.

When the Brand Talks to Itself

A brand talks to itself when it confuses audience with people. When it segments without understanding. When it communicates without listening. When it promises values that its behaviour contradicts. When it imitates cultural codes it does not understand. When it seeks relevance by copying trends. When it produces content as if throwing confetti from a balcony: plenty of movement, very little direction.

It also talks to itself when it believes psychology is merely persuasion and sociology merely targeting. People are more complex than their data and more intelligent than many messages. They may accept imperfections, but they punish falsehood. They may change their minds, but they need reasons. They may admire brands, but they do not wish to be treated as segments with legs.

A brand that understands people converses better because it listens better. It recognises shared values. It observes social tensions. It designs coherent experiences. It builds trust before demanding preference. It knows that selling matters, but that the relationship begins before the sale and continues afterwards.

Contemporary branding needs less obsession with grabbing attention and more ability to deserve it. Fewer fireworks and more architecture. Fewer heroic claims and more concrete reasons to be chosen, remembered and recommended.

Brands Are Built in the Conversation Between Mind, Life and Society

Branding, psychology and sociology meet in a simple and demanding idea: brands live in the relationship between what an organisation does, what people interpret and what a community validates.

Psychology helps us understand how preference is formed. Sociology helps us understand how shared meaning is built. Strategy turns that understanding into decisions. Conscience reminds us that influence demands responsibility.

The strongest brands will be those capable of understanding people as whole beings: rational and intuitive, individual and social, practical and symbolic, changing and yet in need of continuity. Brands able to read values, accompany life journeys, reduce uncertainty and create coherent experiences.

Those that fail to do so will keep talking. Some will even talk a great deal, with impeccable editorial calendars, dashboards full of colours and highly awardable campaigns.