Ask ten different people what a brand is and you’ll get ten different answers. That’s because brand lives in both worlds: the tangible – logos, tone of voice, product – and the intangible – feelings, stories, gut instinct.

David Ogilvy once called it “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.” Deborah Gibbons, former CMO at Reebok, said simply: “Brand is the promise of an experience.” And Carla Hassan, Chief Brand Officer at Citi, describes brand as “the connective tissue between business and culture.” In other words, brand is what stops your product from being just a commodity, and makes it part of people’s lives, identities, and conversations.

I loathe to quote him but Jeff Bezos said: “Brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” and he’s not wrong. It doesn’t matter what you try and say to the world, if they don’t say it back or really believe it, it doesn’t matter. I always think about Hermes, the packaging company’s About Us reading “Hermes moves the world - fast, reliable and naturally sustainable” which is quite literally the opposite of what I would say about them. Slow, extremely unreliable and likely to throw my package into a neighbours rubbish bin. Or take Bezos himself. He wants his new brand to read hot, powerful CEO. We’d say: deeply insecure.

Put simply: your brand only becomes real when people repeat it back to you. If they don’t echo it, live it, or believe it, it isn’t brand — it’s just marketing.

When we talk about a brand at Sonder, we talk about it as the story you tell – again, and again, and again at every single touchpoint. KatKin’s story? Hardcore cat parents who’ll do whatever it takes for their pets. Octopus Legacy? Creating a legacy that connects you in life and death. AllPlants? Clever cooks who turn constraints into creativity. And done right, it becomes a story that others can carry, repeat and make their own. (Katkin said they knew the brand was working when people started to use the hardcore cat parent label and TOV back at them).

Brand can’t be boiled down into a line in a deck, shiny new logo, a campaign, a stellar direct response to a customer’s email. It’s all those things and more. A living story built word by word, moment by moment, choice by choice. And it’s what can make it frustrating for us strategists, copywriters and designers not working in house at brands. Because no matter how good the story or tone of voice is on paper, it only works if the people inside the brand live it every day, at every touchpoint – turning it into a world customers can step into, make their own and repeat when you’re not in the room.

Here are some of the people doing it right, right now.

Paloma Wool

When your brand is your name, it can get messy. (We’ve heard the “help! my team can’t write like me” tone of voice brief a few times ourselves.) Paloma Wool leans into it her brand is her and she positions it as her artistic “project” rather than a traditional fashion label. Her latest campaign doubles down on that positioning by centering her personal evolution – as artist and mother – reminding us that the brand isn’t a polished veneer, but her life, values and the chaos in between. And because it feels honest, it connects. That’s why we’ve seen the work reshared, reposted more times than we can count.

39BC

Do we need another luxury beauty brand? Probably not. Do we want 39BC anyway? Absolutely. Sharmadean Reid’s new bathing brand makes time itself the luxury – time for bathing, for pleasure, for storytelling. The design is decadent (that old-world bottle and jewel-red cap), the copy is poetry (“Fig Milk captures the lush quiet of longing: green fig, soft coconut, and cyclamen, tender as something never spoken”), and the soundtrack is Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper.” When you interact with 39BC online, you feel as sensuous as I’m sure the products will be. The brand gets under your skin.

UVU Club

UVU’s brand world is encapsulated in the line: graceful pursuit of superior self. And everything that follows – events, comms, design, visuals, tone of voice and the way they talk about the Half Tight – is equally intense. For some, too intense. But that’s what we like about it. It’s not for everyone. It’s for those that value athletic discipline, sporting excellence and beautiful products. One customer actually wrote on Trustpilot…

If that’s not the Marketing Director’s mum, we’re extremely impressed.

Grillo’s Pickles

All credit to Rachel Karten for this one, who goes in depth with head of social in her newsletter here. Grillo’s has built what feels less like a brand account and more like a fan account for pickles with 98M Instagram views this year alone. But the momentum doesn’t just come from Grillo’s content alone. Fans riff off their absurdist humour – pickle humidifiers, holding pickles out in public places to see who will take it first – sparks a “yes, and…” response that often turns customers into co-creators, filming their own content right back. Families take part, restaurants do giveaways, even brides at their weddings want Grillos’. They pick up the story and carry it forward, making it their own.

judysfamilycafe

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Judy’s Family Café

Plenty of small businesses try to act big. Judy’s does the opposite and wins. This Illinois café puts its matriarch front and centre, turning her into a cult figure and getting over 400k followers on insta as a result. People travel just to take a picture with Judy (who the hell wouldn’t) and the joy and warmth she embodies become the café’s identity, and customers spread it for them. The result? Lines out the door and new locations opening, powered by the legend of Judy. Now please spend 15 minutes watching her Insta. You won’t regret it.

Doom Juice

An Aussie natural wine brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Think Y2K camo caps with “I need skin contact” embroidered on them. A newsletter sign-up that reads: “Sell your soul.” Even their product talk matches the vibe: “super smashable” wines, “wild-fermented and unfiltered”. It’s the craft beer playbook rewritten for wine and the people love it. Can’t believe it didn’t make it into our merch newsletter.

Orita Mexican Craft Soda

We first spotted Orita on Andrea Hernández’s Snaxshot and fell in love with that. iconic. bottle. It’s also just great seeing a Mexican brand celebrating Mexico without the tired tropes. (Compare it with this UK tequila company featuring none other than Frida Kahlo and you’ll see what we mean) Orita’s design is confident and loud, the copy elevates every ingredient– 100% natural, artisanal, alive – and the story pulls you straight into Mexico’s energy today. ( Read it here in Spanish or here in English.)

Desmond and Dempsey

This brand has always been a celebration of Sundays, downtime, and doing nothing. They’re immaculate at bringing this to life in their product, campaigns, copy, visuals. But they live by it in the real world too. From studio lunches where two teammates cook and everyone gathers mid-Thursday to eat, to founder Molly’s Sweet FA club where women come together for art, music, and play, the brand’s ethos of rest and joy runs right through its culture.

Manors

We wrote about Manors at length in this newsletter and interviewed their marketing director Alex, so we won’t go too far deep it here. But what we love about Manors is that they find new ways to tell their story – that golf is a game to be explored – in so many different ways. And whenever they do in a new film or campaign, their customers celebrate their content as much as they do. It shows they’re not talking into the void. That their customers want it as much as they do.

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