“The world needs you as you are.”

Sure, you’ve heard it before. You’ve probably rolled your eyes.

It’s hard not to hate that message when everyone from YouTube personalities to TikTok influencers collect millions of likes, shares, and subscribes by standing in front of their cell phones and doing a Fortnite dance as a way of being unique and expressing themselves... and for some strange reason, it seems to work.

If everyone gets a trophy for just existing, then what’s so special about the trophy?

But regardless of what everyone else is doing or saying, the truth is still there.

Your entire company is stocked with skills, talents, ideas, personalities, and core motivations that equip you to serve others in a unique way. From the services you offer, to how you interact with clients, cohorts, and other entities, you can’t be replicated.

In other words, you’re remarkable. And it’s a loss when your branding, marketing, and whole organization chases after trends or copies someone else. Especially when you do this instead of telling the truth about who you are and what you offer. It’s a surrender of your own creative agency. Regardless of the trends, people respond to truth, consistency, and authentic communication.

In this article, we'll examine the dangers of superficial branding, and the indispensable alternative of authentic, truthful branding.

https://youtu.be/y0Uy62sFSmg Facing Outward Superficial branding defines a company based not on anything inwardly true about itself, but on an impression it wants to create outwardly.

Superficial branding is “fake it ‘til you make it” branding. It defines a company by its perception of what people expect it to be.

Most often superficial branding shows up as copycat branding. Mimicry of others who have been successful in the same industry. A company brands itself much like a high school student, copying and pasting an encyclopedia article into their term paper.

Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but it’s also the easiest way to be accused of plagiarism.

Superficial branding doesn’t fool anybody and it isn’t hard to detect. It stands out like bad acting in a documentary. Superficial branding has three aspects:

It is caused by “Organizational Imposter Syndrome” Is expressed as “Copycat Creative” And results in undermining your team

Superficial branding is dishonest. While it aims to attract people, it ends up scaring them away. One of the most attractive traits a person or an organization can have in a virtual world of carefully crafted appearances is honest depth. Being an Imposter Comes From Doubt Many people approach branding as nothing more than a recipe for marketing based on what sort of customer they want to reel in.

They think: “In order to attract that kind of customer I’m going to have to talk like this and look like that.” My audience wants something like that, because that’s what all my competitors are doing, so that’s what I need to make myself into.

But the truth is that this rests on a shallow perception of how people actually make decisions. It comes from the behaviorism of the early 20th century, where customers are Pavlov’s dog—ring the right bell and they’ll salivate.

This approach doesn’t give customers enough credit for being able to recognize and understand something new. It wrongly assumes they won't be able to detect something fake when they see it. Unlike dogs, customers won’t keep on trusting you after you trick them.

The deeper problem beneath shallow branding is what we might call Organizational Imposter Syndrome.

For individuals, “Imposter Syndrome” is an eerie feeling of inadequacy around one’s equally successful peers. Those who suffer from Imposter Syndrom often believe their success must rest on some mistake, a stroke of luck, or fraud. In practical terms, it means constantly doubting oneself and hiding differences in order to avoid being revealed as a fake.