Disruptive Branding

How can you make your brand thrive when everything around it is changing? In Disruptive Branding: How to Win in Times of Change, Jacob Benbunan, Gabor Schreier, and Benjamin Knapp argue that brands must transform how they think about disruption—not as a threat to manage, but as an active mindset to cultivate. They contend that becoming a disruptive brand means embedding creativity, agility, and innovation into every layer of your business—from how you define purpose to how you design, communicate, and serve customers.

This book serves as a roadmap for navigating the realities of business transformation in what the authors call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They define brands as either “the disruptors or the disrupted,” showing that survival depends on your ability to think differently about who you are and how you behave. Rather than protecting against disruption, the authors urge you to embrace it as a continuous process of reinvention—one that unifies brand strategy, design, culture, and experience.

Disruption as a Mindset, Not an Event

The book begins by reframing disruption as a creative force that has always propelled human progress. From Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” to Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive innovation,” the authors emphasize that change is not new—it’s constant. What’s new is the pace. The rise of the internet, social media, and global connectivity means that consumers are informed, vocal, and empowered like never before. This environment demands that brands evolve from static symbols of consistency into dynamic systems capable of learning and adapting.

Benbunan and his colleagues show that disruption is not reserved for startups; it’s an attitude. Legacy companies like Apple, Netflix, and SpaceX succeeded because they questioned orthodoxies while staying true to their values. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, Netflix didn’t invent streaming, and SpaceX didn’t invent rockets—but by rethinking the user experience, they redefined their industries. In each case, the brand’s purpose—simplicity, accessibility, ambition—guided innovation.

From Protectionism to Participation

Traditional corporate thinking treats disruption as something to defend against, often by building moats around existing business models. The authors challenge this fear-based approach, arguing that brands must instead participate actively in change. To do so, they need internal cultures that reward curiosity and flexibility. Every employee, not just the marketing team, becomes responsible for sensing shifts in the market and aligning daily decisions with the brand’s purpose.

Disruptive branding is therefore both a mindset and a practice. It calls for “brand as a lens” through which organizations examine all actions—strategy, design, products, and behavior—to ensure they deliver the promise consistently. The authors’ consulting experience with brands like Vueling, the V&A Museum, and A1 Telekom Austria illustrates how organizations can embed this attitude through every touchpoint, from customer interfaces to internal culture.

A Framework for Managing Change

The book unfolds through eleven chapters that mirror the lifecycle of a brand: understanding change, defining purpose, making strategy visible through design, engaging employees, delivering experiences, and sustaining long-term relevance. Each section provides conceptual grounding paired with concrete examples and case studies. You’ll learn how convergence between digital and physical worlds reshapes expectations, why brand strategy must start with a clear “why,” and how design functions as strategy made tangible.

Later chapters delve into measurement and continuous reinvention, making the case that disruptive branding never ends—it’s a living process of learning and improvement. Brands like Nintendo, Airbnb, and LEGO demonstrate how to evolve without losing authenticity: they merge physical and digital experiences, rethink customers as co-creators (“prosumers”), and build meaning through purpose-driven design.

Why It Matters Now

In an age where half the companies listed on the Dow Jones Index in 1995 have disappeared, the authors argue that embracing disruption is not optional—it’s existential. They insist that brand is the anchor in this volatile environment, the connective tissue between vision and delivery. When treated as more than logos or marketing, brand becomes a compass for every decision. Disruptive Branding therefore offers more than a business guide—it’s a manifesto for the future of organizational identity: authentic, relevant, and constantly evolving.

The authors describe today’s market as shaped by two opposing forces: convergence—where digital, physical, and social worlds fuse—and divergence—where brands differentiate by breaking away from the pack. Understanding and mastering both forces is central to thriving in disruption.

Convergence: The Great Blending

Convergence happens when boundaries blur. The digital and physical worlds now exist as one continuous space. Consumers aren’t just buyers—they’re creators, participants, and critics. The authors trace this shift through three dimensions: local-to-global markets, consumer-to-producer roles, and physical-to-digital integration.

For instance, globalization has turned brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks into cultural chameleons that adapt to local tastes. McDonald’s offers tofu nuggets in China and vegetarian Maharaja burgers in India without losing its global identity. The lesson? Relevance today means global ideas expressed through local nuance.

Next comes the rise of the “prosumer”—a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler to describe consumers who also produce value. Social media influencers, YouTube creators, and vocal online communities now co-shape brands. Gap’s infamous 2010 logo change shows what happens when brands ignore this dynamic: an online backlash forced the company to revert within a week. The message is clear—transparency and dialog are now inseparable from brand survival.

Digital-physical convergence further compounds this complexity. Amazon Books illustrates how online insight reshapes offline experience: its physical stores curate shelves based on customer ratings and behavior data. Conversely, brands born physical must master digital agility to stay relevant. Companies that fail—like early-era Snapchat, which over-relied on a single feature—get swiftly overtaken by adaptable rivals such as Instagram.

Divergence: Standing Apart

While convergence levels the playing field, divergence creates differentiation. GoPro’s success hinged on doing exactly the opposite of its competitors. Founder Nick Woodman rejected bulky, feature-heavy cameras and built a compact, durable device that celebrated adventure and simplicity. By diverging from mainstream assumptions, GoPro defined an entirely new category—proof that strategic focus can matter as much as scale.

Another vivid example is Nintendo, whose Wii and Pokémon Go blurred the boundary between physical motion and digital play. Instead of competing on power or graphics, Nintendo made gaming more human. By redefining the concept of a “player,” they invited families, older adults, and women into an industry long dominated by young men. The lesson? Divergence doesn’t mean complexity—it means reinterpreting your purpose for new audiences.

“Brands that master convergence innovate; brands that master divergence differentiate. Disruption needs both.”

In sum, convergence connects brands to a world of new possibilities; divergence ensures they don’t lose their distinct voice. Together, they provide the double helix of disruptive survival—a delicate balance between adapting to the world and standing apart from it.

If convergence and divergence describe the world around you, your brand strategy defines how you navigate it. The authors argue that a brand without a clear why is like a ship without a compass. A brand idea—the concise statement of what makes your organization authentic, relevant, and different—becomes that compass.

From Product to Purpose

A brand idea answers three questions: what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, why you do it. Amazon’s vision “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company” guided its expansion from books to groceries, cloud computing, and AI. Similarly, Nike’s purpose “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” enables it to launch everything from performance wear to social justice campaigns—all under one coherent idea.

When companies lose this clarity, they stumble. Uber’s scandals and HMV’s collapse both stemmed from neglecting brand purpose. Uber built a powerful product but failed to embed ethical and cultural alignment. HMV, once a beloved British retailer, treated brand as logo rather than mission, ignoring how digital transformation demanded redefinition. Without a guiding ‘why,’ innovation becomes reactive rather than visionary.

How to Find Your Brand Idea

The authors outline four steps—Ask, Listen, Think, Refine:

• Ask: What do employees and customers truly value about us?
• Listen: What external perceptions do we face? What gaps or opportunities appear?
• Think: Identify a unifying message that differentiates and motivates.
• Refine: Test for authenticity and relevance internally and externally.

This process is less invention than discovery—your purpose already exists in your culture and customers; it simply needs articulation. The Spanish tech firm BQ exemplifies this. Originally a hardware manufacturer, BQ rediscovered its essence as an educational brand empowering people to “use, understand, and develop technology.” Its transformation turned stores into learning spaces where technology became a means for creativity, not consumption.

Living the Idea

Articulating purpose is only the beginning. The authors warn against “brand hypocrisy” — espousing values you don’t practice. Barclays’ slogan “help people achieve ambitions in the right way” collapsed under executive misconduct; BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” image imploded after the Gulf oil spill. True brand strategy requires alignment between words and deeds across all operations. Or, as Aristotle might put it, you are what you repeatedly do. Disruptive brands prove their purpose through consistent behavior over time.

Design, argue Benbunan and Schreier, is far more than aesthetics—it’s how strategy takes shape. When done right, design communicates meaning instantly; it makes the invisible tangible. The authors position design as both an internal driver of culture and an external conveyor of experience.

Why Design Disrupts

Design’s role expands beyond logos or color palettes to encompass layout, motion, UX, and even office furniture. It’s a universal language that connects product, digital interfaces, and environment under a single vision. Apple’s Steve Jobs and Jony Ive exemplified how leadership and design integrate; by prioritizing design at every meeting, they elevated it from decoration to philosophy. Similarly, Google’s clean redesign under Larry Page turned functional chaos into cohesive simplicity, signaling the company’s maturity without losing playfulness.

Design as Culture and Toolkit

Within organizations, design fosters empathy. It shapes how employees perceive their own brand. Externally, it delivers usability and delight. The authors highlight British fintech pioneer Monzo, whose bright coral debit cards and intuitive app interface helped humanize banking—a traditionally cold industry. Through ongoing co-creation with users, Monzo turned customer feedback into design evolution, disrupting legacy banks with emotion and transparency. The takeaway: good design listens as much as it leads.

The Four Phases of Brand Design

• Exploration: Identify visual territories that align with your positioning—textures, shapes, imagery that capture tone and personality.
• Design: Test emerging concepts across touchpoints.
• Development: Translate findings into a flexible system of principles rather than rigid rules.
• Implementation: Roll out across platforms and refine based on real-world feedback.

The authors also caution against the “three Ps”—process, politics, and power—which often derail creative initiatives. A designer’s brilliance falters under bureaucratic slog unless leadership champions the work. Airbnb’s rebrand demonstrates what happens when vision and execution align: its iconic “Bélo” symbol fuses people, places, and love into one universal mark. CEO Brian Chesky framed it not as a logo but as a statement of belonging. Design, in this sense, becomes storytelling in motion.

Ultimately, design embodies values. It’s not a final coat of paint—it’s the architecture of experience. In disruptive branding, design translates belief into behavior, ensuring that your promise isn’t just spoken but seen and felt everywhere your brand lives.

A brand cannot succeed externally unless it lives internally first. The authors call this principle ‘inside-out branding.’ Employees, not merely customers, are the first audience of a brand’s promise. Their alignment and enthusiasm determine whether the brand’s culture thrives or dies. As Wally Olins famously wrote, products don’t smile back—people do.

Why Internal Engagement Matters

In service-driven economies, every employee interaction is a branding moment. Disruptive companies replace top-down control with distributed ownership. The NASA janitor who told President Kennedy, “I’m helping put a man on the moon,” exemplifies this spirit—when purpose permeates every role.

Modern workers—especially millennials and Gen Z—seek meaning, flexibility, and transparency. Engagement today means collaboration across teams and technologies, not attendance at corporate town halls. Organizations must design brand engagement programs that translate mission into daily experience.

Designing an Engagement Program

An effective program follows ten guiding principles: clear objectives, tailored approaches, fact-based storytelling, top leadership involvement, intrinsic motivation, visual identity for the initiative, and long-term continuity. Employee engagement is not an event but an operating system. Voith, a 150-year-old German company, used this formula to reenergize a workforce during restructuring. Turning its anniversary into a platform for renewal, Voith redefined its motto as “Inspiring Technology for Generations” and anchored it through participatory internal campaigns emphasizing ownership.

Employer Brand and Employee Journey

The book introduces two practical tools. The first is the Employer Value Proposition (EVP)—a clear statement of what makes your organization a unique and meaningful place to work. The second is the Employee Journey Map, which tracks every touchpoint from recruitment to alumni relations. Together, they ensure your internal brand reflects consistency, recognition, and growth.

“If an egg is broken by outside force, life ends; if by inside force, life begins. Build disruption from within.”

Internal engagement turns employees into ambassadors and companies into communities. Without it, even the best marketing collapses into noise. When brand becomes the collective language of a workforce, change becomes self-propelling—and disruption, a shared adventure.

At its heart, the authors argue, brand equals experience. It’s the sum of all interactions people have with you—before, during, and after engagement. Successful companies like LEGO and Ritz-Carlton prove that designing holistic, emotion-driven experiences is the ultimate differentiator.

From Product Promise to Experiential Proof

Historically, brand was a promise of consistent quality. Today, it’s about delivering that promise across countless touchpoints. Experiences shape perception more than ads ever could. Ryanair’s “no-frills” efficiency resonates because it’s exactly what customers expect. Authenticity, the authors stress, matters more than polish; it’s better to be knowingly budget than accidentally disappointing.

Four Pillars of Brand Experience

• Products and Services: The tangible core — design them to express your brand idea.
• Behaviors: Every human interaction embodies brand values (e.g., Ritz-Carlton’s “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen”).
• Environments: Physical spaces make abstract values visible (consider Glossier’s friendly pop-ups or LEGO’s creative stores).
• Systems: Digital design and UX ensure seamless journeys—like Monzo’s intuitive banking app.

When tied together, these touchpoints form a total experience ecosystem. The V&A Museum demonstrates this integration beautifully: its visitor journey—from website to gallery signage—aligns around four principles: invite, intrigue, illuminate, and inspire. Each reinforces the museum’s brand promise of imagination and ingenuity.

The Future of Experience

The authors suggest using “moments of truth” to identify where experience must excel. In an age of sensory overload, these moments—the instant of check-in, the click of payment confirmation—define emotional memory. Designing for them turns ordinary exchanges into brand-defining events. Disruptive brands, therefore, practice creative empathy: anticipating feelings, not just actions. They design futures, not features.

Every product or service is a truth test of your brand promise. As the authors put it, “There is no brand without product, and no product without brand.” The strongest companies ensure that what they sell and what they stand for never drift apart.

Authenticity: Staying True

Authenticity reflects how faithfully your product expresses your culture. The Swedish luxury bedmaker Hästens or American headphone brand AKG both built reputations on single-minded pursuit of quality, not marketing slogans. Similarly, Hiut Denim built jeans to revive craftsmanship in its Welsh hometown—its authenticity became its story. Each product spoke purpose.

Relevance: Serving Real Needs

Customer-centricity means addressing unmet needs with empathy. Using ethnographic research and rapid prototyping prevents “faster horse” thinking, borrowing Henry Ford’s metaphor. Brands like Facebook, Airbnb, and Uber succeeded because founders solved their own frustrations—making them intuitively relevant to their markets.

Differentiation: Doing It Differently

True disruption happens when authenticity and relevance combine to create clear distinction. Starbucks reimagined coffee as an affordable luxury “third place.” Uber redefined taxis through frictionless tech. Spanish airline Vueling applied these principles to create affordable flights that still felt human—new planes, playful naming, simplicity. Within six months, it overtook legacy carriers in perception and profitability.

By applying this three-part lens, brands ensure coherence between vision and execution. Authenticity keeps them grounded; relevance keeps them desired; differentiation keeps them remembered. Together, they transform products from commodities into conversations.

The authors close with a simple truth: disruption never ends. To stay alive, brands must “change to stay the same”—evolving form while preserving essence. This means institutionalizing reinvention as a permanent state of being, not a crisis response.

When and Why to Rebrand

Not all change is good change. Benbunan warns against rebranding out of ego or boredom. Instead, use tangible triggers: loss of relevance, internal disengagement, mergers, or portfolio expansion. Statoil’s transformation into Equinor, for instance, reflected not vanity but necessity—realigning perception from oil dependency to sustainable innovation to attract young talent.

Conversely, SeaWorld’s crisis after the Blackfish documentary shows how refusal to adapt can destroy decades of goodwill. Only by reorienting toward conservation and transparency could it regain credibility. Change must align with authentic purpose, not cosmetic corrections.

The Framework for Reinvention

To assess whether a brand needs renewal, the book proposes three questions: Is it still authentic to its origins? Is it relevant to today’s audiences? Is it differentiating in its market? This framework transforms uncertainty into clarity.

Russia’s Rostelecom applied this logic when modernizing from a state utility to a digital services giant. By redefining itself as “digital access to what you need” and introducing a vibrant, adaptive identity, it attracted younger, tech-savvy audiences without alienating existing users. The visual metaphor—folding shapes revealing hidden sides—symbolized openness and infinite connection, aligning visual storytelling with business reinvention.

Brand Reinvention as Culture

Disruptive branding’s ultimate promise is resilience. When reinvention becomes habitual—when every employee scans for change and acts upon insight—the brand renews itself organically. This, the authors suggest, is the modern definition of endurance: not timeless sameness, but timeless adaptability.