Brand Management 2026, Part 5: Staying True to Your Brand in Dialogue
Updated: 1 day ago
How much say can a brand handle?
Brand management 2026. Part 5 of our series.
By Johannes Roth, CURTH+ROTH
Autumn 1998. LEGO launches Mindstorms. A programmable brick for building robots. Shortly afterwards, adult fans crack the software. They write their own programs and share them online.
LEGO briefly considers sending cease-and-desist letters. The Mindstorms team argues against it. When people take a product apart with such enthusiasm, it shows the product is worth something. LEGO chooses a different path. The company sets up a forum. It writes a "right to hack" into the license. And for the successor, it brings fans in-house as testers.
Who was managing the brand here? The company? Or the fans?
The brand no longer belongs to the company alone
LEGO is not an isolated case. Communities form around many brands. Albert Muñiz and Thomas O'Guinn described this in 2001. They call it brand community. Its members feel connected. They maintain rituals. And they feel responsible. For each other and for the brand.
That cuts both ways. Communities carry a brand. But they can also redefine it. In Part 2, we introduced a concept for this: self-similarity. A brand may change. But every new form must grow recognizably out of the old one.
So the question is not "dialogue, yes or no?". The question is: how much say can the gestalt handle?
Authoritative, not authoritarian
One answer comes from an unexpected field, developmental psychology. In 1966, Diana Baumrind distinguished three parenting styles. Authoritarian: lots of control, little responsiveness to the child. Permissive: lots of responsiveness, little structure. And authoritative: clear expectations and real listening.
The comparison is imperfect, as all comparisons are. Customers are not children. But it describes three attitudes we also see in brands.
Authoritarian. Under CEO Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie & Fitch built its brand on exclusion. In 2006, he said: "Are we exclusionary? Absolutely." For years, sizes such as XL and XXL were not available. For a long time, the brand was successful with this approach. Then came the recession and competition from fast fashion. The brand found no way back. Only after Jeffries left in 2014 did it change course.
Directionless. In 2010, Gap unveiled a new logo on its website. The protest on Facebook and Twitter was loud. Gap then offered to let customers help design it. That backfired too. After about a week, the old logo returned. The then president of Gap North America said: "We did not go about this in the right way." First without dialogue, then without a stance.
Authoritative. These brands listen. And they know what they stand for. LEGO and Patagonia show what this can look like.
LEGO: a say, within guardrails
Today, fans can propose their own sets on LEGO Ideas. If a design reaches 10,000 supporters, a LEGO review board assesses it. If it goes into production, the creator receives a share of sales.
But this say has clear limits. Modern warfare is ruled out. So are life-size weapons, violence, alcohol, politics and religion. A design must not be too similar to existing LEGO sets. And in the end, LEGO decides. Based on factors such as feasibility, licensing and expected demand.
This is dialogue within guardrails. Fans contribute ideas. The brand makes sure they fit.
Patagonia: saying no is part of it
Patagonia shows the other side. The brand's fleece vest had become the uniform of the finance industry. In 2019, Patagonia refocused its business with logo-branded corporate clothing. Since then, priority has gone to companies that put protecting the planet first. The media called it the end of the finance vest.
Our reading: Patagonia did not court this target group. It limited it. Because this use threatened to shift the brand's meaning.
At the same time, Patagonia invites people to take part. Through Worn Wear, the brand has been taking back worn clothing since 2017 and offering it again. Customers become part of the promise.
Patagonia is a special case, though. Since 2022, the company has been owned by a trust and a non-profit organization. Not every brand is free to make such decisions.
What may move and what may not
How can this be applied elsewhere? We distinguish three levels:
Core: the brand promise, values, origins. It stays.
Codes: name, shape, colors, tone. They remain very stable.
Expression: topics, formats, partnerships, responses to the community. It may move.
The rule of thumb: the closer to the core, the slower the change. At LEGO, the brick stays. The ideas also come from outside. At Patagonia, protecting the planet stays. The ways to get there change.
The VW Golf shows how stable codes can be. Since 1974, it has been instantly recognizable as a Golf. Across eight generations. What this means for trust in VW is the subject of a separate article in our car series.
Trust grows where both come together
Part 3 looked at how brands squander trust. Here we see the counter-movement. Trust grows when a brand listens and stays true to itself. Brands that only listen become directionless. Brands that only stay true to themselves lose touch.
What this means for market research
Communities are loud. That makes them valuable. And risky. Because the loudest voices are not necessarily the most important ones. Byron Sharp reminds us that brands grow mainly through many occasional buyers, not a few fans. If you listen only to the fans, it is easy to fall prey to the availability heuristic.
That is why a second look pays off. Three questions help:
Who is speaking? Core customers, occasional buyers or people who do not buy the brand at all?
What is core, what is code, what is expression? Depth-psychological interviews show which features carry the gestalt.
Is the proposal self-similar? Does it fit what the brand has delivered so far?
A word of caution
LEGO and Patagonia appear in almost every book on branding. We explain their success with hindsight. Abercrombie & Fitch was successful with exclusion for a long time. And the comparison with parenting styles is an image, not a law. Cases show patterns. They cannot prove anything.
What this series shows
Five parts, one question: what keeps brands strong when everything is in motion? Our answer in brief:
To close the series, we take a short detour: what can a name do for a brand?
We look forward to the discussion. Disagreement is welcome, too.
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