Why the noisiest brands crack first.
Hey volume addicts—
A few years ago I was in a meeting where everyone was thrilled about a brand.
“Look at the numbers,” they said. “Reach through the roof. Mentions everywhere. We’re killing it.”
Then I asked a simple question: “OK, but if we turned off paid media for six months… who would miss you?”
Silence. People looked at each other. The mood changed.
That’s the problem I want to talk about.
We’ve spent a decade equating visibility with brand strength. If a logo screams on TikTok, stalks you in pre‑rolls and appears on every street corner, it must be a winning brand… right?
Except a lot of the brands that were “everywhere” not so long ago are now:
- closing stores,
- cutting staff,
- rewriting their story after the hype ran out.
Meanwhile, other brands you barely see in your feed quietly keep margins, loyalty and pricing power.
So let’s start with a small heresy:
Loud and strong are not the same thing. And often, the loudest brands are the most fragile.
This isn’t about taste (“I don’t like bold colours”).
It’s about confusing attention with structural health.
The cult of loudness
Look at how most dashboards are built:
- awareness,
- reach,
- impressions,
- social mentions,
- share of voice.
All useful. None of them tell you:
- how hard you are to copy,
- how clearly your codes point to you,
- how resilient you’ll be when culture, algorithms or funding shift.
As a young marketer, I loved loud brands. Big launches, big media, big everything. It took me a while to realise you can burn a lot of money amplifying something that has no spine.
Noise is a tactic. Strength is an asset.
We treat them like synonyms.
A simple 2×2 that hurts a little
Most brands sit somewhere in this very rough matrix:
- Loud & Strong – visible and built on hard‑to‑copy assets.
- Loud & Weak – everywhere, but surviving on hype, discounts or novelty.
- Quiet & Strong – not trendy, but deeply trusted, with sticky codes.
- Quiet & Weak – invisible and generic.
The dangerous quadrant isn’t Quiet & Weak. Those brands at least know they’re in trouble.
The real danger is Loud & Weak: when all the energy goes into volume before the foundations are ready. That’s when brand building turns into an expensive illusion.
Let’s look at each side.
Loud & strong: noise built on real assets
Duolingo: chaos with a spine
Duolingo is a perfect example of a brand that’s both noisy and structurally strong.
The owl is everywhere: unhinged TikToks, meme replies, weird stunts. It feels chaotic, but the chaos has rules:
- learning as a slightly annoying daily habit,
- guilt and humour as fuel,
- product mechanics that support the “one more lesson” loop.
Since leaning fully into that persona, Duolingo has multiplied its active users and grown revenues, not just fame. The loudness sits on top of assets competitors can’t steal: the owl, the tone, the rhythm of the product. Try copying that without looking ridiculous.
Liquid Death: extreme codes for a simple product
Liquid Death sells… water. Yet in a commodity category they feel sharper than most energy drinks.
Everything is a deliberate overreaction:
- a tallboy can that looks like beer,
- skulls and metal typography,
- a tagline like “Murder Your Thirst”,
- sustainability wrapped in dark humour instead of soft green.
Turn off the ads and the can on the shelf still screams “Liquid Death”. That’s what strong looks like: codes so specific that if a competitor copied them, the market would laugh.
In both cases, loudness amplifies something that would still be recognisable in silence.
Loud & weak: when volume hides fragility
Now flip the matrix.
Allbirds: when the story runs out of road
Allbirds started with a clean narrative: sustainable materials, minimalist design, the unofficial sneaker of the tech crowd. Then came heavy funding and very fast expansion.
For a while the brand felt unavoidable: stores, collabs, think‑pieces. But minimalist sneakers and eco‑stories are easy to copy. Within a few years, the aesthetic became category wallpaper. The company kept spending to stay loud while profitability suffered and stores started closing.
The perception of strength came from volume more than from deep, ownable codes.
Glossier: from cult signal to pastel default
Glossier did something similar in beauty: soft pink, glossy textures, “no‑makeup makeup” and a tight visual universe born from a blog community.
Carrying the pouch was a status symbol for a specific crowd. Then the entire sector copied the look. At the same time, questions around culture and inclusion hit the brand. Growth slowed, the unicorn valuation cooled, and Glossier had to pivot towards wholesale and partnerships.
Again: loudness bought time. Once the category caught up, there wasn’t enough structural difference left.
These aren’t failures. They’re reminders: hype is a time‑limited advantage. If you don’t convert attention into hard assets, the market eventually calls your bluff.
Quiet & strong: brands that don’t trend, but never go away
The opposite quadrant is less photogenic, but it’s where a lot of real power lives.
Think of:
- industrial suppliers that quietly set the specs for an entire sector,
- regional supermarkets with ugly flyers and brutal loyalty,
- B2B software you never see on Instagram, but that nobody wants to rip out.
They don’t dominate culture. They dominate renewals and negotiation. Their codes may look old‑fashioned, but they are recognised instantly by the people who matter.
One of my favourite clients ever looked like this. Social media almost absent. Website from another era. But when we started mapping their customer base, we found purchasing managers who had been fighting to keep them in the supplier list for ten years.
Quiet & Strong.
The brand work wasn’t to make them louder; it was to give visual dignity to a strength they already had.
How to tell if your brand is loud or strong
Strip away the dashboards for a moment and ask less comfortable questions.
1. If you turned off paid media for 6 months, what would survive?
Would people still recognise you on a shelf, in a tender, in a feed? Would your colours, shapes, phrases, mascot still point to you? Or would you blend into the fog the moment you stop shouting?
If recognition collapses when spend stops, you’re buying noise, not building equity.
2. Can people describe you without clichés?
Ask a few customers to explain your brand to a friend.
If you get “quality, innovation, customer focus, sustainability”, you’ve just heard a category, not a brand.
Strong brands trigger oddly specific language:
- “the water in the metal can that looks like beer”,
- “the language app with the passive‑aggressive owl”,
- “that ugly supermarket where everything is cheap but good”.
If nobody can get that specific, you’re generic—no matter how nice the logo.
3. Where does growth really come from?
Is it driven mostly by promotions, influencers and discounts? Or do you see signs of organic pull: name searches, repeat buyers without incentives, people copying your codes?
I’ve seen brands panic when they cut a promo and sales dropped, then realise the promo was doing the heavy lifting their brand never did.
4. Can competitors copy you without pain?
The hardest question: could a rival copy 80% of your visual and verbal system tomorrow without looking absurd?
If yes, you’re in trouble.
The brands we called Loud & Strong made at least one uncomfortable choice:
- an owl that bullies you,
- a skull on a can,
- humour that occasionally offends.
That discomfort is not a bug. It’s the moat.
So what do you do with this?
If you’re running a brand—or advising one—start here.
Audit loudness vs strength
Forget the glossy brand book for a day.
- Map your earned signals: what people say about you unprompted.
- Map your codes: colours, shapes, phrases and rituals that are recognisably yours.
- Map your vulnerabilities: where a cheaper or louder competitor could steal your position tomorrow.
Place the brand honestly on the matrix. If you don’t, the market will do it for you.
Decide what you’re willing to look like
Real strength usually requires one decision that makes someone inside the company uncomfortable.
“Too aggressive.” “Too weird.” “Too informal for our sector.”
If everyone feels perfectly safe with the brand, you’re probably designing for LinkedIn applause, not distinctiveness.
Buy less volume, invest more in assets
Before asking “how do we be everywhere?”, ask:
- What are the two or three assets we want people to recognise in three seconds?
- How can we hammer them consistently across everything, even at small scale?
- Which touchpoints are totally generic today and could quietly become vehicles for those codes?
You can be relatively quiet and still build an extremely strong brand if every interaction does the same distinctive job.
The uncomfortable conclusion
The world is full of brands that look strong because they’re loud and brands that look weak because they’re quiet.
The real question isn’t “How many people have seen us this week?” It’s “How many people could not mistake us for someone else, even in silence?”
If you can switch off the ads and your brand still speaks—through shape, colour, posture, language—you’re in a good place.
If you need to shout constantly just to be recognised, the problem isn’t media spend. It’s that under all the noise there isn’t much there yet.
Until next time, stay discerning.
Alex
Most companies ask agencies to “turn up the volume”. More impressions, more content, more campaigns.
Before touching the volume knob, I prefer to ask:
If we make this louder, what exactly are we amplifying?
At Kredo Marketing I work with brands—especially SMEs—to separate loud from strong:
- auditing real brand assets vs generic noise,
- sharpening positioning and codes competitors can’t casually steal,
- only then building campaigns that deserve amplification.
If you suspect your brand might be more Loud & Weak than you’d like to admit, let’s dissect it together and rebuild the part that matters: strength, not just volume.
