Novelty Is Not a Personality

Why the gimmick that gets a laugh can quietly cost you your brand

This one started with a story I heard secondhand. A social-media team had been briefed to pitch their most kitsch concepts yet — the bolder and more outrageous, the better. And to their credit, they delivered: the ideas genuinely challenged the status quo, nothing safe or expected about them. But they didn’t land. The client never bit, the concept never ran, and all that nerve quietly died on the cutting-room floor.

Here’s the part that stuck with me. The ideas didn’t challenge the status quo — they were the status quo, the same motifs you scroll past on Pinterest a hundred times a day. What they challenged was the brand itself: each concept pulled the client off-key, away from its own identity, in exchange for novelty that wasn’t even novel. Borrowed from everywhere, belonging to no one — and aimed straight away from the thing that made the brand recognizable in the first place.

That’s the whole trap in a single brief. Somewhere in the last few years, “creative” quietly started to mean “gimmick” — a pun on the label, a mascot with googly eyes, a trend-jacked reel with the sound everyone’s using this week. It gets a laugh in the room. It might even pop for a day. And then six months later, you look up and no one can quite say what the brand stands for anymore.

I’ve argued before that your brand is probably too nice — too smooth, too safe, too eager to blend into the category. I stand by every word. But there’s a trap on the other side of that advice, and that social team walked straight into it: they mistook kitsch for creativity, and in reaching for a reaction, they reached right past the thing that would have made anyone care.

The gimmick is not the idea

Kitsch is seductive because it’s easy and it’s loud. When the pressure is on to “do something creative,” a gimmick is the fastest thing to reach for — it’s novel, it photographs well, and novelty always gets a reaction. The problem is that a reaction isn’t the same as a relationship.

Here’s the distinction that matters: creativity is the expression of your brand’s truth in a fresh way. Kitsch is novelty borrowed from somewhere else and bolted on. One comes from the brand; the other is applied to it like a sticker. People can feel the difference, even when they can’t name it. The gimmick reads as a costume. The real thing reads as character.

A costume gets attention. Character earns loyalty. Only one of those sells wine next year.

And it’s not even new

Here’s the cruel irony of reaching for kitsch: most of it isn’t even original novelty. It’s recycled novelty.

I typed “wine curtain” into Pexels the other day — two words — and there it was: an arm reaching through a curtain holding a glass of wine, and right beside it, the same setup with an arm reaching through a curtain with wineglass in hand. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen a hundred versions on Pinterest and a thousand more across every winery’s feed. It’s cute. It’s kitsch. And it’s so thoroughly done that it no longer says anything about anyone.

That’s the real trouble with a stock idea: it can’t carry a brand, because by definition it already belongs to every brand — which means it belongs to none of them. The moment your “boldest” concept can be found with a two-word search, it has stopped being yours.

Friction, pointed the right way

If you’ve read me before, this might sound like a contradiction. I’m the one telling you to add friction — a point of view, a rough edge, something the eye catches on. So how is a wild novelty label not exactly that?

Because not all friction is created equal. Good friction points toward the brand: a bolder, sharper, more surprising expression of who you already are. Kitsch points away from it: tension for its own sake, a swerve that has nothing to do with your story. Both break the pattern. Only one deepens the brand while it does.

Think of the difference between an estate with a genuinely irreverent soul leaning into that irreverence — and a buttoned-up heritage winery slapping a meme on its flagship cabernet because memes are having a moment. The first is friction. The second is a brand wearing someone else’s clothes. Both labels got made in the same afternoon; only one of them still makes sense a year from now.

Your guidelines are a trellis, not a cage

This is where a lot of brands take the wrong lesson. Burned by a gimmick that flopped or blurred them, they retreat into rigidity — no risks, no edges, nothing but the safe house style. And now we’re right back to too nice.

The answer isn’t less creativity. It’s creativity that lives inside your brand guidelines — and here’s the reframe that changes everything: your guidelines are not a cage. They’re a trellis. In the vineyard, the trellis doesn’t limit the vine; it’s the structure that lets it climb, catch the sun, and actually produce fruit. Your brand’s voice, palette, and point of view work exactly the same way. They’re the constraint that lets your creativity grow up instead of sprawling into noise.

The most inventive work I’ve ever made didn’t come from throwing out the guidelines. It came from pushing hard against them while staying unmistakably on-brand — which is far harder, and far more valuable, than being weird for a weekend.

The sweet-spot test

So how do you know whether an idea is friction or kitsch? A few questions I run every concept through — the same ones that would have caught those Pinterest-motif ideas long before they reached a client:

Take the logo off. Is it still, unmistakably, you? If the idea only works because your name is stamped on it, it’s borrowed. If it would still feel like your brand stripped bare, it’s owned.

Does the idea come from the brand, or get bolted on? Trace it back to your story. If the through-line is real, keep going. If you have to invent the connection after the fact, that’s the tell.

Does the tension deepen the story, or just distract from it? Friction should make people understand your brand more. If the clever thing pulls focus away from what you actually sell, it’s costing you.

Are you earning attention, or renting it? A trend borrows someone else’s moment and gives it back when the sound changes. A true idea builds something that’s still yours after the trend is gone.

Keep the brand in focus

None of this is an argument for playing it safe. It’s an argument for aiming your boldness. The goal isn’t to be the loudest brand in the feed for an afternoon; it’s to be the one people still recognize — and still choose — a year later.

The real craft isn’t picking between safe and wild. It’s finding that narrow, valuable spot where your brand stays in sharp focus and you add just enough friction to keep people leaning in. That’s not a gimmick. That’s a point of view, expressed with nerve, held inside the lines that make you you.

Attention is easy. Anyone can rent it for a day with a googly-eyed mascot. Staying yourself while you earn it — that’s the whole game.