Why I'm working on brand right now

This is not a gentle year to be alive in.

I know this intrinsically, in the same way that almost anyone reading this might feel. But I also know this because I sit in a lot of lounge rooms for a living.

Different suburbs. Different furniture. Different stories on the wall.

And I see it there without meaning to.

The weight people are carrying into a conversation that was supposed to be about a house.

It’s never really just been about the house. Not in my entire career, even when I was too green to see it.

But it’s so much louder now, in every way.

Rates do what rates do, sure. Money’s loud. yes.

The news keeps stacking: markets up, then holding, then somebody’s job quietly handed to software, then another headline about whether AI is the real thing or just the next hype cycle.

I’ve spoken about this before. I’ve lived through periods like this before.

Sort of. But also, sort of not.

Everyone’s trying to stay upright while half the internet tells them they’ve found a cheat code. Keeping up already feels like a second job, and most of us haven’t clocked off from the first one.

Underneath the speed, people are tired. Not dramatically. But entirely.

A bit scared. Feeling ignored, or left behind, or like the ground keeps shifting before they’ve found their footing on it.

The stories on the walls of our lives aren’t curated by how much they meant to us. But by how much they’re impacting us.

I’m yet to see family photos displaced by an obnoxiously large portrait of the RBA’s latest decision or the AI bubble that’s simultaneously sucking the life out of people while promising to simplify it.

I’ll let you all know when I do.

But everything that lands in front of us now comes with a tax.

Is this real? Is it true? Or is it just another thing shaped to pull a reaction out of me at the cost of my energy.

There’s a real lack of trust out there. People are yearning for a human experience.

Something honest. They don’t want the sales performance. None of us do.

They want truth. They want to be dealt with fairly.

Between the scams and the AI-generated feed, a lot of them can’t tell what they’re looking at anymore.

So much of what hits us is curated. Or fake. Or gently trying to get its hand in your pocket.

I don’t think most of it is malicious.

I think it’s fear. Businesses are frightened, so they sell harder.

Not because the thing is right for you. But because they need it to be. You feel that.

You’re being sold to constantly, and almost none of it is actually about you.

So, of all the things to spend myself on right now, brand work feels like an odd one.

I’ve poured a lot into it. More than you’d imagine.

Into the work we’re doing (and redoing) at River. And into these posts.

Some land. Some just sort of …hit the ground.

Not even with a cool explosion. Just a dull, uninspiring, unfortunate, thud.

In terms of these posts, I’ve stopped trying to pick which is which, because I’m almost always wrong.

The one I bled into disappears. The one I nearly didn’t post finds people, for some reason.

There’s a part of my brain that loves to diagnose and over-intellectualise some of this, too. Insulation, I suppose.

“Ahead of my time. Just like Nietzsche and Socrates. These people just don’t get it.”

“They love it. All of it. I’m certain. They just love it so much that they forgot to comment.”

“The algorithm just punished me because I said a bad word. It’s suppressed. I’m being silenced for speaking the truth.”

“I’m pretty much like Ed Snowden. But way more handsome.”

Or, Chris, perhaps you just weren’t all that funny.

But the above loop is a reminder on my end that the likes were never really the point.

And working out why they were never the point is what got me thinking about brand in the first place. Which is exactly why I keep coming back to the brand work.

Not as a logo nor as a tagline. Not as another coat of polish for the marketplace.

Because brand, done properly, is a filter. A giant one.

It’s the thing you run every decision through. Every post. Every hire. Every client. Every dollar.

Every yes. And just as importantly, every no.

What comes out the other side is only the stuff that’s actually true to you. I’ve been doing that work with a pretty practical hope attached:

If the filter is clear enough, it starts attracting people who think like me. Who have values and morals that align with mine in the right ways, but catch my blindspots.

Clients. Projects. Even the next person who joins the team.

You stop rediscovering each other from the bottom of the ladder every time. You start halfway up.

The convincing stress drops. You’re already warmer. Already on more of the same page.

That matters so much more than we give it credit for.

Wrong-fit work doesn’t just cost hours. It costs something in the body.

You’re constantly translating yourself. Reading the room.

Replaying the playbook for someone who was never going to land where you land. Clear brand is one of the few ways I’ve found to cut that before it starts.

When everything around you is getting louder and faster, that filter might be the most useful thing you can own.

Not because it makes money instantly. It really doesn’t. It’s a cost.

But it tells you what to ignore.

The work I’ve been doing hasn’t handed me anything clever. It’s handed me clarity.

What deserves the time. What doesn’t. What I should actually be spending myself on.

There’s a lot out there desperate to sell you the next thing. Knowing who you are, in the middle of that, is something that can’t be bought.

I’d just rather be slow and sure of who I am, than quick and for sale. I’m writing that for me as much as for anyone who’ll read it.