The Rebrand Everyone Congratulated Me On That I Still Think Was a Mistake
I won't name it. I probably never will. But there's a rebrand sitting in my portfolio that people still bring up as a highlight. Clean launch, good press, a leadership team that was thrilled. It's the kind of project you're supposed to look back on with not so complicated pride.
I still think about what I'd tell them differently if I could go back.
Not because the work was bad. If anything, it was some of the best execution I've ever been a part of. The strategy made sense, the rollout was smooth and the response was exactly what we'd hoped for. If someone had asked me at the time whether it was a success, I'd have said yes without thinking twice.
I’m not so certain now.
Looking back, I don't think we solved the problem that actually mattered. We solved the problem the brief described. Those aren't always the same thing.
By the time I really understood the business, I had a growing suspicion that the brief itself had quietly expired. The company had changed. The market had changed. Even the conversations customers were having had started drifting somewhere else. But the project already had momentum. There were timelines, expectations and a room full of people ready to make decisions. So we did exactly what we'd been asked to do.
And we did it well. So well.
That's the uncomfortable part.
Sometimes great execution gives everyone permission to stop asking whether they were solving the right problem in the first place. When something is delivered beautifully, it's surprisingly easy to mistake that for having solved the thing that actually needed solving. I think we all did. Me included.
I've become much slower since then. Not slower at making decisions (my teams would probably disagree with that). Slower at accepting the first version of the problem that lands on the table. They're usually presented with a lot of confidence. Confidence, I've learnt, isn't always the same thing as accuracy.
These days, I spend more time listening than people probably expect. The first few conversations are rarely about marketing. They're about how leadership talks when they stop presenting. What Sales keeps hearing that nobody has written down. Which customer stories get repeated without anyone really noticing. Funny thing is, if you stay in the room long enough, the problem statement almost always starts changing on its own.
I've never spoken publicly about that rebrand before. Maybe because I'm still working out what I actually learned from it, beyond "listen longer before you start."
I suspect the lesson is something closer to this: a beautifully executed answer can still be the wrong answer.
I'm not entirely sure I've finished thinking about that yet.
OFF THE RECORD
Sometimes being right isn't the same as getting it right.
NEXT IN OFF THE RECORD
MORE I HAVEN’T SAID
I'm not quite done embarrassing myself in public.
COMING SOON
