Red Lines, Aluminum Foil, and the Brand That Needed Both
I recently worked with one of my favorite long-term clients — a large, buttoned-up, excellent company full of genuinely impressive people — to build an internal department brand.
I've done this for them before. Many times. The process has always been smooth, professional, efficient. They trust outside experts. They follow their corporate brand structure. They don't waste time and neither do I. It's practically a love language!
But a year had passed since our last brand build together. A year in which I had done serious work on myself (not the therapy kind, though I'm sure that's overdue too) but on my client process. I had cut the fat, streamlined the delivery, sharpened the strategy. I was operating at a level I was genuinely proud of.
What I failed to notice was that while I had evolved, their internal dynamics around branding had not.
RED LINE #1
The mindset hadn't shifted. I saw it. I noted it. I filed it under "things I'll deal with later" and kept moving.
RED LINE #2
Which was the bigger one: the lead decision-maker would not be present when I presented the strategy, concepts, and direction for the brand.
I knew this was a problem. I said it was a problem, to myself, very quietly, while doing absolutely nothing about it. My fail point.
And I kept going.
Partly out of genuine care. I wanted to give this team something they could be proud of, something that actually represented who they were.
Partly because I have never — not once in my life — left something unfinished. My kids could tell you this. So could the aluminum foil I've wiped down and reused to keep pie crusts from over-browning. (Don't look at me like that. If it's a good sheet, it has more life in it, right?!)
So I pressed on. And what followed was the slow, steady dilution of a strong brand concept by a rotating cast of well-meaning people relaying feedback from a leader I never got to speak with directly. The strategy softened. The messaging blurred. The visuals — once sharp and intentional — got walked back toward comfortable, familiar, and forgettable.
We ended in the land of cliché. Population: every brand that's ever had "synergy" in its tagline.
And I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd watched a significant number of hours — and my client's budget — disappear into a process that never had the right conditions to succeed.
I'm a deeply anti-waste person. My family will confirm this is both a virtue and a personality trait that comes up a lot. I wash and reuse plastic bags. I return gifts people don't love so the money doesn't go to waste. And after a year of working hard to build a leaner, sharper process, one that protects both my time and my client's investment, I sat with the uncomfortable awareness that I had ignored every signal pointing toward a different outcome.
These RED LINES I've developed aren't ego. They're not inflexibility. They're the product of experience — the same kind of experience that makes you, as an expert in your own field, worth hiring in the first place.
Here's where it gets relevant to you:
When you hire a branding expert and they start asking questions that feel like they're "not about the logo" — about your audience, your positioning, your decision-making process, who needs to be in the room, even about the services you offer — that's not filler. That's the work. That's where the real brand lives.
And when a branding expert worth their rate sets a process and holds a line, it's not because they're being difficult. It's because that process is the foil. It's there to protect what's underneath, (your time, your budget, your brand) from the slow drip of scope creep, unclear ownership, and decisions made by people three steps removed from the vision. Let the foil do its job, and you get a clean result. Pull it back too soon, and you're scrubbing the pan.
The lesson I took from this — one I should've already known and chose to temporarily ignore — is that my process exists to protect everyone at the table. When I'm approaching a RED LINE, walking past it out of politeness or persistence doesn't serve my client. It just costs both of us something we can't get back.
For me, that lesson is now permanently in the "do not repeat" column.
For you: if you're considering hiring someone to help build your brand, and they tell you they need access to the decision-maker — believe them. That's not a power move. That's the process working exactly as it should.
