Is Your Brand Draining Energy or Inspiring Action?
By Carrie Cousins
Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their November 2026 issue.
Just this week, I found myself digging through a drawer of charging cables, hoping to find the one USB-C that will bring my phone back to life.
It was exhausting. Not because the task is hard, but because the micro-friction wastes time and mental energy. Everything looked the same but was different.
Here’s the thing: Fragmented branding creates the exact same drain.
When a brand stretches its lineup into Pro, Plus, Ultra, and Lite, they think they’re offering choice. But to the customer, it feels like reaching into a drawer full of mismatched charger cables. When you slightly change your colors, logo, image style, or brand voice, the customer can’t differentiate between you and something else.
The core dynamic is near-identical incompatibility, which is rooted in the idea that psychologically, encountering two completely distinct things is easy to process. If you need to plug in a lamp and someone hands you an HDMI cable, your brain rejects it instantly.
The drain comes from near-misses.
- Simple Core Need: You just want to charge a battery or solve a specific problem. (In terms of brand, that specific problem could be knowing that an ad is for your business and they want the thing you are offering.)
- Meets an Artificial Barrier: The tool or product is right there, but slight variations force time to pause, inspect, and decode. (You should be able to identify what you need without thinking and in a fraction of a second.)
- And Comes with a Hidden Cost: Decision fatigue. Every time you stop and perform a mental audit, it creates cognitive overload. (I don’t know about you, but I have enough things to think about!)
Steve Jobs used this concept to save Apple from bankruptcy, eliminating dozens of different Mac computer variants (Performas, Quadras, PowerBooks, and so on) for a simpler approach: Consumer vs. Professional and Desktop vs. Portable on a grid resulting in four products. (Zero “cable-drawer” confusion.)
I challenge you to apply this idea to your brand. Is it simple and clear? Is it direct in its approach? Do you know who you are talking to and what they expect from you?
To build lasting brand equity:
- Audit for near-misses and combine brand elements that are only subtlety different. Do you use three shades of green? Could it be one?
- Standardize naming and language with the way your customers or audience talks. It’s ok to say the same things repeatedly. Only you are bored with it; customers are not. Nike has been saying “Just Do It” since 1998 and it still resonates.
- Treat your customer’s mental capacity as a finite resource. The brands that will continue to win offer lower friction. We have the attention spans of goldfish (maybe!); less thinking might just equal greater success.
Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.
