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The best opportunities for brands to stand out often emerge where cultural tensions collide.
Consumers want innovation and heritage, polish and realness, efficiency and evidence of human care. Brands that hold both sides at once are creating new signals of value.
Let’s explore three of these tensions, and five questions to help you find your own opportunity.
1/ Richness in ordinary
The tension: Innovation ↔ Heritage
Consumers continue to seek novelty and progress, but there is also a renewed appreciation for craft, ritual, provenance and tradition. The strongest brands are finding ways to blend the two. Fishwife in the US started with an almost comically un-luxurious product: tinned fish. But rather than premiumizing it in the conventional way (gold foil, heritage language, ‘finest ingredients’) they make the whole experience feel culturally alive. It works with technologically advanced canneries and responsible fisheries, yet also hand-packs products, collaborates with artists and chefs, and turns opening a tin into something closer to a little culinary ritual.
2/ Crafted imperfection
The tension: Perfection ↔ Realness
For years, aspiration was built on polish, control and flawless execution. Those cues still matter, but consumers are increasingly drawn to products, brands and experiences that feel human, authentic and rooted in reality. Story mfg clothing out of London is made using natural fibers and plant dyes, often through handcrafted techniques and artisan partnerships, but the brand doesn’t try to hide the variability produced by those processes. They openly explain that colors can bleed, fade and change depending on the soil, plant, weather, humidity and acidity involved in producing them. They actually regard their variability as part of the appeal.
3/ Deliberate inefficiency
The tension: Efficiency ↔ Human intent
As optimization increasingly becomes the norm, consumers are placing greater value on the evidence of human judgement, care and effort behind products and experiences. Maker’s Mark in the US leans into the intentionally ‘unreasonable’ choices behind its bourbon – from using soft red winter wheat to hand-dipping every bottle in its signature wax. Its ‘Perfectly Unreasonable’ platform explicitly celebrates the decisions the brand continues to make even when more efficient alternatives exist and establishes that even old brands can make their resistance to efficiency part of their renewed cultural relevance.
The disruption
Five questions to ask yourself as a brand…
- What ordinary moment could you make feel richer?
- What proof makes your premium credible?
- What human touch can you protect or add?
- What imperfection or specificity could become a strength?
- What part of your value is currently invisible?
The common thread is that value is no longer just about being better, faster or more polished. It’s about meaning: the ritual around an ordinary moment, the honesty of an imperfect material, the visible proof that someone cared enough to do it the hard way. These tensions aren’t problems to resolve. They’re spaces to occupy.
So take another look at your brand through these lenses. Where could you add richness, protect a human touch, or make your hidden value visible?
If you’d like help uncovering the tensions that matter most in your category and turning them into a distinctive brand position, get in touch. We’d love to explore it with you.
About the author
- Bryce Clarke
- Director, US Consumer Goods , STRAT7 Incite
Bryce Clark is a strategist at STRAT7 Incite, specialising in helping consumer brands unlock growth through insight-led strategy. She works at the intersection of data, brand, and customer experience, supporting organisations as they navigate shifting consumer expectations. With a focus on innovation and practical impact, Bryce is particularly interested in how emerging trends and technologies are reshaping the future of consumer packaged goods.
