Brand Biology
Let's bring in a little chaos.
Advertising, and strategy in particular, has long centered on militant metaphors to describe the nature of our thinking. But the more we understand about how brands grow, the less it makes sense. We're may be in a competition for memory - and while it is not infinite, there's space for more than one brand to win. We aren't locked in a zero sum game.
So we need to adapt our metaphors and models. In searching for a better answer, my personal goal is to find something more organic. More based in biology - with growth, complex systems, and adaptability baked in.
Today's model: Brand Biology, or how Growth DNA gives us a clearer set of codes for building strong memories.
The old idea of a brand as a static "position" in the consumer's mind was tidy, reassuring, and increasingly unhelpful. Brands that thrive aren't carved in stone—they're coded to evolve.
We’re not waging war for mindshare. We’re engineering something far more subtle, and more powerful: brand biology as an evolutionary system. Living, learning, and replicating in culture.
Let's try to stop thinking of brands as fixed identities - on-brand or off, fixed design systems and scripted messages - and started seeing them as living codes. Let's embrace the entropy. Let's borrowed the language of biology instead of the order of battle?
Welcome to Growth DNA.
Base Pairs: The Building Blocks of Distinctiveness
DNA has four nucleotide bases that combine to create life. Brands have their own version: shapes, sounds, colors, characters. These are not superficial design decisions. They are hereditary markers.
The job isn’t just to be noticed. The job is to be encoded. Strong creative craft helps balance something novel, charming, and feeling-inducing to get attention, yet consistently reinforcing those building blocks that get full credit. Codes that can be recognized without reading. Processed without thinking. Recalled without trying.
Think Netflix's heartbeat.
Think the Nike swoosh.
Think Cadbury purple.
These are not assets. They're base pairs.
They can be combined in novel ways, built together in different orders. But they must always be present to jumpstart the growth of the brand memory.
Gene Expression: Memory in Motion
DNA only matters when it's expressed. So does brand code.
Expression happens when brands show up in culture not just visibly, but memorably. When their codes are tied to Category Entry Points, anchored to cultural rituals, and stitched into the rhythm of everyday life.
Memory isn't built in brand books. It's built in moments: The first beer after work. The walk to school. The train ad that made you smile. The jingle that arrived before the logo.
Brand memories aren't built in a vacuum. As VCCP articulates in Cracking the Memory Code, it's better to reinforce the desire path that already exists than to build a new sidewalk from scratch. Lean into how people already think about and engage with your brand - find the rituals, patterns, objections, stigmas, and fandoms - these are the first memories to build out from. The DNA of the brand starts here and continues to evolve outward.
Brands are not unique stories. They are memory scaffolds. What makes them matter is how they're expressed, again and again and again.
Mutation: Innovating Without Losing the Thread
Evolution isn't chaos. It's coded change. And the strongest brands mutate within boundaries. They surprise without disconnecting. They evolve while preserving their code.
This is freedom within a framework, or WARC's "Go Deep, then Go Long" when developing a lasting brand creative platform. Repetition can refresh a memory, but it doesn't strengthen it. Inventive consistency is where a brand can build the momentum necessary to build a lasting advantage through their brand.
The great ones stretch their DNA without breaking it. Barbie didn’t become relevant again by abandoning pink. Liquid Death didn’t go mainstream by calming down. They mutated with memory intact.
Replication: Echoing Through Culture
Brand growth is still governed by the iron law of mental availability at scale. That means broad reach, repeated exposure, and codes that replicate across contexts.
Advertising isn’t art. It’s repetition in culture.
Three pathways for the brand code to echo, achieving scale along the way:
Mass Replication via Media: Seen = remembered.
Replication via Cultural Ritual Integration: Own the moment, again and again.
Replication via Creative Consistency + Stretch: Echoes, not reruns.
Spotify Wrapped is genius not because it's data-driven, but because it replicates. You see it in feeds, stories, texts. It takes brand code and lets the public carry it. That’s replication. That’s survival.
Selection Pressure: Attention + Emotion
Evolution is the story of survival of the fittest - evolving within an ecosystem, pushing the frontiers of selection pressure (predators, food supply limits, environmental risks, etc).
Same for brands: we face limits, and those that win will be the ones that most creatively, most consistently, adapt to overcome natural limits on attention, and a high bar for eliciting emotion.
In a fragmented, post-truth media ecosystem, conventions that earn attention and trigger emotion get encoded deeper. Think of the Cadbury gorilla. Think of Apple "1984." Think of any System1 five-star ad: high emotion, low friction, total fluency.
Attention + Emotion are both limiters and accelerants. Those that learn to harness them stand to gain.
Biology: A Brand in Motion
The best brands aren’t locked in place. They are anchored, but mobile. Their codes are designed to move, shift, and scale without losing their shape.
So stop positioning. Start encoding. Stop declaring your brand. Start expressing it through culture, at scale, with emotion, over time.
That’s not brand building. That’s brand biology.
