Stay Grounded in What Already Makes the Brand Matter
The fastest way to lose clarity in a business?
Start changing things when uncertainty shows up.
One of the first places that shows up is price.
Budgets tighten, forecasts shift, and suddenly the question becomes how to protect volume — which usually leads to some version of “what can we do on price?” It feels responsible, like you’re doing something to meet the moment.
I saw a very different version of that when I was on the marketing team at Snapple during the post-9/11 downturn. At the time, there was plenty of uncertainty (a nice way of saying the world was on fire) — economic, emotional, all of it.
It was very early in my career, and I watched Snapple move through it — the conversations, the decisions, the tradeoffs. I understood it on paper, but I didn’t fully get it yet.
When I think back, what I remember isn’t what we changed. It’s what we didn’t.
We didn’t try to reposition the brand around being cheaper.
We didn’t go looking for a new audience or try to reinvent what Snapple was.
If anything, we spent more time getting clear on what it already meant to people.
It was familiar.
A little nostalgic.
A small bright spot in someone’s day.
It wasn’t positioned as a luxury, but it also wasn’t something you’d cut first. It felt like something you’d choose to keep. And that showed up in all the decisions we made.
We stayed close to the customers who already understood the brand — focusing on what they were already buying and what they were already coming back for.
We didn’t dilute the personality. The tone stayed the same. The brand still felt like itself. Nothing about it felt like we were reacting in real time, even though the environment around us absolutely was.
Looking back on it now, with more experience, it’s clearer what was actually happening.
We weren’t trying to change the brand to meet the moment.
We were staying grounded in what already made it matter.
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