Changing without losing yourself
Markenführung 2026. Teil 1 unser Serie zu Markenführung
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Changing without losing yourself
Brand management 2026. Part 1 of a series.
13 Oct 2026 · Johannes Roth
A test that got everything right
On 23 April 1985, Coca-Cola changed its recipe. For the first time in 99 years. The decision was well prepared. Around 200,000 people had tried the new formula in blind tests. It beat the original.
Even so, there was an uprising. The phones at headquarters never stopped ringing. Fans set up protest groups. Some stockpiled the old Coke. After 79 days, the original returned. As Coca-Cola Classic.
What had happened? The tests had measured taste. Not the brand. People had not lost a drink. They had lost a piece of their world.
The case is more than 40 years old. Its question is more pressing than ever: how much change can a brand take?
The paradox of brand management in 2026
Today, brands are expected to move. To listen, respond and join the conversation. On social media, communities help write the brand.
Susan Fournier and Jill Avery described this back in 2011 (The uninvited brand). Consumers become co-authors. If you want resonance, you have to give up control.
At the same time, brands need to stay recognisable. Trust depends on recognition. Doing both at once is hard.
And the starting point is not an easy one. According to Havas' Meaningful Brands 2025 study, 78 per cent of brands could disappear. Hardly anyone would miss them (report).
This leads to the guiding question of this series:
How can a brand change through dialogue without becoming unlike itself?
We see three answers. They build on each other: meaning, self-similarity, trust.
1. Meaning: brands I see myself in
During my time in California, I had the pleasure to meet Steve Diller. Together with Nathan Shedroff and Darrel Rhea, Diller wrote the book Making Meaning. It was published in 2005. The question it asks is even more urgent today than it was then.
The authors describe a staircase (Shedroff). Each step answers a question people ask about an offer:
Function: Does it do what I need?
Price: Is it worth it?
Emotion: Does it make me feel good?
Identity: Is this me?
Meaning: Does it fit my reality?
An example: a young woman buys cosmetics from a young brand. Like her, the people behind it care about natural beauty. The brand reflects her values and supports her self-image.
Researchers call this self-congruity. The effect is well documented (Aguirre-Rodriguez et al. 2012). It is particularly strong for brands with symbolic meaning (Escalas and Bettman 2005). Cosmetics are one of them.
But meaning has its limits. Byron Sharp warns that purpose is easy to copy (Marketing Week). And people don't always buy in line with their values. Meaning cannot simply be claimed. It has to show in what a brand delivers.
Part 1 explores this in depth: when does meaning carry a brand, and when does it not?
2. Self-similarity: moving without becoming unrecognisable
Before studying psychology, I studied sociology in Hamburg. Under Prof. Alexander Deichsel, the founder of brand sociology. A concept from this Hamburg School is especially helpful today: self-similarity.
Self-similarity is not sameness. Oliver Errichiello describes it as "a system's ability to develop its own gestalt in a 'typical' way" (Markenradar, in German, our translation). Picture this: no two oak leaves are identical. Yet everyone recognises an oak leaf.
For brands, this means: the surface may move. The pattern remains.
Lego shows how this works. Between 1999 and 2003, the company slid into a deep crisis. The number of elements had doubled to more than 12,000. Many products drifted away from the core (Entrepreneur).
From 2004, under its new CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, Lego returned to the brick. And it opened up to its fans. Through LEGO Ideas, they now submit their own designs. Once an idea reaches 10,000 supporters, Lego reviews it.
Patagonia shows the limits of dialogue. The brand's fleece vest had become the uniform of the finance industry. In 2019, Patagonia refocused its corporate vest business. Since then, priority has gone to companies committed to protecting the planet (Business of Fashion). So dialogue does not mean that any community may redefine the brand.
Part 2 explores this in depth: self-similar in dialogue. How brands grow with their communities.
3. Trust: when expectations are met
Trust grows when expectations are met. Again and again, over a long time. This brings us back to self-similarity. Only a brand that stays recognisable can meet expectations.
It pays to look beyond one's own school. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, associated with Byron Sharp, is often seen as the opposite pole to classic brand theory. It focuses on distinctiveness rather than differentiation.
Yet this is where the schools meet. Deichsel wrote as early as 1999: "The more distinctive the gestalt, the stronger its attraction" (Deichsel 1999, cited in Biallas 2015, our translation). Both schools rely on consistent, recognisable features. Where they differ is in how much meaning matters.
Maserati shows what happens when a profile becomes blurred. Sport, luxury or lifestyle? The answer has become unclear. According to Stellantis, deliveries fell from around 26,600 in 2023 to around 7,800 in 2025 (report).
There are many reasons for this: US tariffs, demand in China, gaps in the model range. The brand alone does not explain the decline. But a blurred gestalt makes it harder to maintain trust.
Sometimes trust is lost more quickly. After a change of ownership in 1998, the German cola brand Afri-Cola changed its recipe (Wikipedia). Loyal fans protested. Their protest gave rise to a brand of their own: Premium-Cola (der Freitag, in German).
In 2008, the German organic soft drink Bionade raised its price by 30 per cent. Sales halved that same year (taz, in German). In 2009, Tropicana replaced its familiar packaging. Within less than two months, sales fell by 20 per cent (Bloomberg). Each time, the brand broke an expectation it had created itself.
Part 3 explores this in depth: when brands gamble away trust. How it goes wrong.
What this means for market research
New Coke teaches us something fundamental. A product test is not a brand test. If you change a brand, you need to know what holds it together.
Three questions help:
Which features form the core of the brand?
Which can change without harming the gestalt?
What are the communities saying, and how much of it fits the brand?
The answers rarely lie on the surface. Depth-psychological interviews reveal what a brand means to people. This is exactly where we come in at CURTH+ROTH.
A word of caution
Lego and Patagonia appear in almost every book on branding. We explain their success with hindsight. We see failed brands less often.
The cases illustrate our thesis. They cannot prove it. The same applies to my own closeness to Diller and Deichsel.
That is precisely why this series also gives opposing views a voice.
What's next in the series
Meaning. When brands support our self-image, and when they don't.
Self-similarity in dialogue. Lego, Patagonia and the communities.
When brands gamble away trust. Afri-Cola, Bionade, Tropicana. And Lonsdale as a counterexample.
Plus an excursion into naming. Names are part of a brand's gestalt, too. When the Maserati MC20 becomes the MCPura after a facelift, the question is: do customers still recognise a pattern? Does the new name have the same appeal?
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