At karaoke last Tuesday, a man in a Blazers jacket put in for a nine minute power ballad and made it about ninety seconds before the key defeated him entirely. The host, who calls everyone baby, took the mic back and said, baby, pick something you can finish. The bar applauded. He picked something he could finish and it was great.
I have thought about that sentence all week, which is what December does to me.
Because this was the year of brands putting in for the nine minute power ballad. Twelve months of price increases nobody explained, layoff announcements written in the language of gratitude, and platforms that changed the rules underneath everyone at once. In November, eight dollars bought anybody a blue check, and within a day there were convincing fake accounts moving real stock prices. Every promise made on borrowed infrastructure got a stress test it did not ask for.
The brands that came through this year in one piece were not the ones with the biggest claims, they were the ones who narrowed what they claimed until every word left standing was true.
Look at what held. Patagonia spent September restructuring its ownership so the profits fund the thing it has said out loud for fifty years, which is not a campaign, it is a claim getting smaller and heavier at the same time. Liquid Death promises you water and a joke, and delivers water and a joke. Salt & Straw raised prices this year like everyone else, and told people plainly why, and the line down Alberta did not get shorter.
Now look at what wobbled. The companies that spent 2021 promising transformation, community, a whole new way of living, then spent 2022 quietly reducing headcount and hoping nobody laid the two documents side by side. People laid them side by side.
The companies that spent 2021 promising transformation, community, a whole new way of living, then spent 2022 quietly reducing headcount and hoping nobody laid the two documents side by side.
Here is the part that gets lost. Narrowing is not retreating. A smaller promise kept is a larger brand than a big one broken, and audiences in a bad year develop an unusually accurate ear for the difference. They are not looking for vision right now. They are looking for whether the thing you said in March is still true in December.
So my only recommendation for January is subtraction. Take your positioning, cross out every claim you cannot personally verify from operations, and see what survives. Whatever survives is your actual brand. Build the year on that.
Truffles and Barnaby made exactly one promise in 2022, which was to be in the kitchen at six. They have kept it two hundred times running. Nobody has ever doubted them.