LinkedIn·Wednesday, 26 August 2026·20h ago
Most “clever” branding is just bad copywriting wearing a black Issey Miyake turtleneck and thinking it’s Steve Jobs. I keep seeing brands…
Clo Willaerts
Corporate Trainer & Keynote Speaker | Digital Marketing Strategy, Leadership Development | 25+ years guiding marketing executives through exponential tech change
Most “clever” branding is just bad copywriting wearing a black Issey Miyake turtleneck and thinking it’s Steve Jobs.
I keep seeing brands add random apostrophes, swap letters for numbers, remove vowels, or slap accents onto words that never had them.
All in the name of “creativity.” 😤
A bar calling itself aper’eau instead of Apero is a perfect example.
Nobody can spell it. Nobody can search for it. And your bartender has to explain the fucking pun every time someone asks.
Same energy:
Kidz. Bikr. Drivn.
You removed a vowel. Congratulations.
Or the random umlauts and accents. I am now Googling how to type an ō just to tell you I hate hate hate these:
Wünder. Hōme. Bränd.
And don’t get me started on taglines that require a full brand strategy deck and a Creative Director to understand.
“Where tomorrow meets the feeling of yesterday.”
Cool. Are you a bank? A hotel? A candle company? F*** knows.
If I have to stop and decode what you do, you’ve already made my life harder than it needed to be.
Clarity is not boring.
Your customer is not sitting there thinking, “I hope this brand makes me work a little to understand it.”
They just want to know what the hell you do.
Be clear. Then, if you still have the bandwidth for it, be clever.
In that order.
What’s the most painfully try-hard brand name you’ve seen lately? I need more things to be annoyed about.
HT 🇺🇦 Eddie Shleyner’s book for getting me started
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