Why brand is felt before it is understood—and what that means for the work.
We once spent three days deciding on a ribbon.
Not the color. Not the width. The texture—the way it would feel in someone’s hand. Because in that fraction of a second—in that small, unremarkable physical moment—that ribbon would either feel like the brand … or like just another ribbon.
We sourced it, finally, from a company in Japan whose entire purpose is the beauty and meaning of those moments. We knew immediately when we found the right one because we felt it.
That project was with Vera Wang, during what would become a significant expansion of her brand beyond bridal. Those three days obsessing about a ribbon taught me something I’ve spent years working to fully understand, articulate, share, and practice: Brand is felt before it is understood.
The science behind the instinct.
In that moment, I knew the right decision the way a craftsperson knows something—through the hands, before the head. When I encountered the work of Daniel Kahneman, the neuroscience finally gave it a name: System 1 and System 2 thinking. His Nobel-winning research established that ninety-five percent of human decision-making operates below the threshold of conscious thought. Fast, automatic, emotional. The other five percent—the deliberate, rational system—arrives later, often to explain what the first system already decided. This is where brand lives. Not in the argument a brand makes for itself, but in the accumulated, subconscious weight of every experience a person has ever had with it.
Donald Hebb’s work in neural pathway formation tells us how that weight is built. His principle—neurons that fire together wire together—means that every consistent brand experience is a reinforcement event. Each encounter strengthens the pathway, making the next recognition faster, more automatic, and more felt than reasoned. What we experience as a brand’s presence—that quality certain brands have of feeling inevitable, of feeling like themselves in every moment—is a neurological condition.
The inverse is equally true. Inconsistency doesn’t merely dilute a brand, it works against it at the biological level. A brand that is essentially itself in some moments but not in others creates competing neural pathways.Kevin Lane Keller’s Brand Resonance model describes the apex of the brand-audience relationship as a state of genuine connection. Deep loyalty, active advocacy, and the conviction that this brand is simply the right one. He mapped the destination with precision.
Kahneman and Hebb explain, together, how brand experience is built. Keller defines why it matters. Resonance is built through the consistent, repeated expression of what an organization essentially is, across every moment of human contact. It accumulates. It compounds. And it is durable in direct proportion to how true it is.At the level of organizational performance, brand is the power of your reputation.
The implication is structural, and it reaches every corner of an organization. Brand is not a marketing function, it is an organizational condition. Every person in every department is either building the brand or eroding it. There is no neutral ground.
The work we did for Vera Wang was always about more than a specific project or element. It was about creating coherent experiences—ensuring that every decision was in service of a single truth about who she was. For luggage, it was the angled layering of black microfiber and leather that echoed Vera’s use of angled layers in her bridal gowns. For home fragrance, it was the french-folded construction of the packaging and the thoughtful secondary uses of the vessels as keepsake boxes and wine chilling containers. For ballet flats it was the grommet in the front of the shoebox that made it easier to slide it out from a stack. Every object, every surface, every choice reinforcing that truth.
So yes, we spent three days deciding on the texture of a ribbon.