Mariana and her team were fantastic to work with. Responsive, understanding, and organized. Most importantly the quality of the work is exceptional. I am tremendously proud to be represented by the branding that Design Etiquette created for my business.
Brandon Chillingworth — Hacked BD
Is Your Brand Weird Enough?
— Is Your Brand Weird Enough? — Is Your Brand Weird Enough?
Branding, Brand Identity, Strategy
Is Your Brand Weird Enough?
It might sound weird to ask such a weird question.
But I’ve been thinking about what makes a brand sell. Not $200K or $500K a year, but millions of dollars.
And somehow, the answer always seems to come back to weirdness.
I’m talking about having something unique or different about your product, your brand, or the way you do business. Otherwise, chances are you’ll blend in with everyone else.
So how do you make yourself weird?
Here are a few examples I’ve been thinking about in case your business needs a little more weirdness.
01. By changing something about your product
Some brands make themselves different by creating a product that nobody expects.
The other day, I saw a video about a guy who created a flavored toothpick company called Pick’Em.
A toothpick! One of the most boring products ever. And yet he took that boring product and added flavors like mint, mango, and strawberry.
That’s it. Adding weirdness to a toothpick made him millions.
02. By designing a unique brand identity or packaging
Other brands make themselves different through branding and packaging. The example that comes to mind is Graza.
They sell olive oil, but unlike other brands that come in a dark glass bottle with elegant labels and premium packaging, Graza went in the complete opposite direction. Their packaging looks like something designed for a seven-year-old: bright green colors, doodles, and plastic squeeze bottles.
In extra virgin olive oil terms, they’re the weird kid that eats their boogers during recess.
But they’re also the brand everyone remembers. And that weirdness has made them millions.
03. By talking differently than everyone else
Some brands become different through the way they communicate. In my opinion, Wendy’s has mastered this.
They turned their social media into a comedy show: They roast competitors, make fun of trends, and jump into random conversations nobody asked them to join.
For a fast-food restaurant, that’s pretty weird, and it makes them worth following and paying attention to.
I can think of other examples:
T-Mobile chose a bright magenta color when everyone else was using safe tech colors.
Bloom built an entire brand around prebiotic drinks that extended into a whole line of health supplements.
And what about Michael Jackson? He has a category of his own.
After watching his biopic last week and having Instagram’s algorithm bombard me with videos about him, somewhere between the moonwalking and the conspiracy theories, I started thinking about how weird he was.
He had his rituals, his obsessions, his traumas, and all sorts of behaviors that made him a world apart from everyone else. This, and his talent, made him unforgettable.
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny may be today’s pop royalty, but decades later, Michael Jackson is still the King of Pop. He was too weird to be replaced.
The Age of AI
Twenty years ago, being weird wasn’t exactly celebrated. In many ways, it still isn’t.
But if you’re building a business today, in an age of AI-generated plagiarism and sameness, chances are you’re better off being different. Being memorable. Being a little weird.
Because weird connects and sells.
If your brand is starting to feel like everything else out there, it might be time to rethink how it shows up. We help brands build identities that are not just well-designed, but genuinely distinctive.
Mariana and her team were fantastic to work with. Responsive, understanding, and organized. Most importantly the quality of the work is exceptional. I am tremendously proud to be represented by the branding that Design Etiquette created for my business.
Brandon Chillingworth — Hacked BD
How to Stand Out in a World of AI Sameness
— How to Stand Out in a World of AI Sameness — How to Stand Out in a World of AI Sameness
Branding, Brand Identity, Strategy
AI made design easy.
Now everything looks the same.
Everyone with an AI tool has become a creator.
Websites, apps, products, content… The cost of creating them is collapsing.
Designing a “good enough” website or logo has become easier.
Creatives are producing work that’s better than what many of us were doing as junior designers.
But here’s the question we should be asking:
When everything looks good, how do you stand out?
The gap is no longer between bad and good.
It’s between generic and distinctive.
And that gap has never been more valuable, or more difficult to achieve.
So what actually makes a brand stand out today?
I think it comes down to two things AI can’t fully replicate:
1. Great Design That Doesn’t Feel Like AI
I mean great design. 10 out of 10 design.
Because a lot of what we’re seeing today is a copy of a copy of a copy: same styles, layouts, and typography.
It might look fine. But it is vanilla, bland, disorganized.
And that’s exactly the problem. AI has raised the floor for bad design, but only creativity, and refined skills, can make design truly great.
Today, brands don’t stand out by doing what’s easy to produce.
They stand out by doing what requires judgment and perspective.
It’s creativity that makes people feel something, makes you stop scrolling, and feels intentional, not prompt-generated.
That has always been rare.
And even more so now.
2. A Personal Point of View
Winning brands today don’t just sell products.
They carry a voice.
A founder’s perspective.
A story people can connect with.
A reason to exist beyond the product itself.
In a world where AI can generate infinite content, what people are actually drawn to is something that feels human.
Because trust comes from each brand’s unique personality and story.
AI will keep accelerating.
There will be more tools, more prompts being written, and more sameness distributed across everything we see.
But the brands that win will not be the ones producing more content.
They will be the ones that look, sound, and feel different.
Great branding and creativity are no longer just a premium.
They have always been an advantage, and in an AI-driven world, they’re now a must.
If your brand is starting to feel like everything else out there, it might be time to rethink how it shows up.We help brands build identities that are not just well-designed, but genuinely distinctive.