build a world, then sell it
branding is shifting from building fake personalities to selling real lives
Branding used to be about making things feel human. Strategists shaped a personality. Designers gave it style. Copywriters made it sound like your clever friend at a dinner party. And for a while, that worked.
The DTC boom flooded every aisle with clever names and contemporary branding. For a while, it was fun. Then it got exhausting. We’re in a new chapter now.
At the same time, personalities were rising. Influencer and creator culture, for better or worse, has become mainstream. People don’t follow brands, they follow people.
So the strategy evolved. If people are tired of brands, let them have people. And let those people feed them brands.
That’s the shift I want to focus on, here: branding isn’t just trying to feel human anymore. It’s being built around actual humans—with real lives, real opinions, and real audiences.
Because people don’t want a brand to tell them what they need. They want a person to. It’s why Molly Baz’s Ayoh Mayo feels more real—more alive—than anything Hellmann’s could write on the back of a jar.
the brand is the person is the brand
The way these brands are built is fundamentally different. You’re not starting from scratch. A creator’s voice is the tone. Their closet or house sets the color palette. Their taste becomes the strategy. Their audience is the target market.
We’re not dressing up brands to feel human, we’re dressing humans up to feel like brands.
personal brands evolve like people do
Legacy brands stay in their lane. Personal brands take detours.
Tom Holland gets sober, makes a non-alc beer. Kristin Bell becomes a mom, so she starts a brand for moms. Drake’s addicted to gambling, so… Stake!
These aren’t pivots. They’re arcs.
Take Paige Lorenze. Her brand Dairy Boy is a shoppable diary. She moved from the city to Southport, Connecticut, and her wardrobe followed. You’re not just buying a hoodie. You’re buying her current ~aesthetic~. It's metropolitan pastoral; it's her.
That’s the play: build a world, then sell what fits inside it. Products should feel like a natural extension.
Because when your life is a research trip, your business becomes a reflection of where you’ve been, and where you’re headed. You go viral for your travel vlog, you make luggage. You buy a house, you make home goods. Your kid picks up tennis, you make kids’ tennis apparel. It’s not random. It’s responsive. It’s believable. It’s story. People loooove story.
branding across platforms, not products
The old goal was just consistency across SKUs and marketing. However, with a personal brand that spans a portfolio of different products, there is a new requirement. You have to define the connective tissue that combines everything with your name on it. Flexible enough to grow, specific enough to be unmistakable.
Your podcast should feel like your Instagram. Your merch should echo your tweets.
New brand architecture looks more like this:
A scroll-stopping (and sell-able) presence
A flexible but strong aesthetic
A personality that permeates everything you do
hollywood paused. creators didn’t.
While the old content machine stalled, creators kept shipping.
Film production in Los Angeles fell by over 40% during the 2023 Hollywood strikes, with the industry losing an estimated $5 billion. Streaming growth has stalled, and audiences are burnt out on reboots.
But online? Millions of hours are posted every day. People making things. Not companies.
People who know their audience, people with a voice, people who get that brand is the bridge between who they are and how they make money.
Creators aren’t replacing actors. They’re replacing channels. They create content and sell the ad space.
legacy brands are just distribution now
Big brands aren’t driving culture anymore. They’re latching onto it.
Their best plays come from people who already have the crowd:
Emily Mariko × Our Place
Emma Chamberlain × Levi’s
Hailey Bieber × Krispy Kreme
Arvin Olano × Rugs USA
Tinx × Tabasco
Alix Earle × Forever 21
The brands aren’t manufacturing cool anymore. They’re leasing it.
Which is why personal brand matters so much. If it’s clear, consistent, and distinct, you become the asset they want to rent. Selling out is no longer a bad thing; it’s applauded. It’s how we support our favorite creators.
we’ve seen it up close
This isn’t a theory. It’s my job.
We worked with Alex Cooper to rebrand Call Her Daddy, design the Unwell Network, and create the beverage brand Unwell for Nestlé. Then we translated it to IRL, by creating the full identity for Call Her Daddy: The Unwell Tour—merch, marketing, even stage design. All anchored in who Alex is and what she stands for.
We worked with Kendall to define the art direction, launch strategy, and merch line for 818 Tequila. We also helped Mel Robbins launch her first national tour with a brand that reflects her message and how far it’s come.
These projects cut across industries. But they share one thing:
When the brand is built around a person, everything clicks. The decisions get sharper. The spin-offs make sense. And the audience actually cares.
We’ve watched personal brands grow into something way bigger than the person behind them.
the long game
Creator-led brands clearly work. The question is, can they last?
There are signs that they can:
Skims is leaning on celebrity-heavy marketing, so it won’t need to rely so heavily on Kim.
Clooney’s Casamigos sold for a billion and still dominates as the original celebrity brand template.
Mr. Beast is stacking product empires (despite looking so fucking evil) because kids watch him more than Nickelodeon.
Chamberlain Coffee is holding its own due to really good creative and consistent involvement from Miss Chamberlain herself.
But here’s the funny part: the thing that makes these brands successful—their personality, their closeness, their human fingerprints—is the very thing they’ll eventually have to outgrow.
Longevity requires structure. Scale. Distance. These brands work because they feel personal, but they last because they slowly stop being personal. They disseminate.
They hire CEOs. They bring in ops teams. They separate the person from the product. They start to look a lot like the traditional brands they were built to replace.
Because the founder won’t stay interested forever. Or they burn out. Or grow up. Or fall off. And if the brand can’t survive that transition, it wasn’t really a brand… it was merch.
So yes, these brands win because they’re built around a person. But they endure by becoming something bigger than them.
That’s the irony. The creator era is reinventing branding, only to evolve right back into the model it replaced. lol.
why this matters
This isn’t just about celebrity brands. It’s about where branding is going.
More personal. More emotional. More human. Even if your client is a big, faceless company, the expectations are shifting.
And it applies to you, too. You might not be an influencer, but you are your own channel.
The work you share, the way you write, the taste you show, it all feeds your future pipeline. Your portfolio becomes your platform. Your interests shape your incoming projects.
That’s what a portfolio career is. Not one job. Not one lane. Just one identity expressed in a bunch of different ways. If the work feels true to you, people can follow you anywhere.
Your identity is your unfair advantage. The more clearly you express it, the more doors it opens.
cheat codes for modern brand building
1. build a portfolio, not a pigeonhole
Your work is a signal. When it’s aligned with your taste, it pulls in more projects that fit, and stretch.
2. anticipate the shift
The rules are changing. More personal. More flexible. Whether you work with creators or corporations, you need to know where expectations are headed.
3. make your toolkit transferable
The tools, logos, systems, storytelling, still matter. But now they have to stretch across platforms, products, and mediums. The goal isn’t just recognition. It’s coherence.
4. lead with patterns, not platforms
Your tone, your references, your style, these are your through lines. Define them. Repeat them. Let them travel.
5. collaborate with clarity
Choose projects and partners that feel like extensions of your world. If it doesn’t sound like you, look like you, or align with your values, it’s probably not for you.
If you've made it this far, you should support my brand by shopping the Cul De Sac site. Everything is 50% off until Sunday at midnight. xoxo
I am learning so much through your substack posts Colly! You are a gifted designer and teacher- your passion comes through in all you do!