Is Your Brand Still Relevant? - Canvas8

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Overview

In this CMO Inspired Summit masterclass, Nick Morris, Founder and Managing Director of global strategic insights agency Canvas8, which has worked with brands including Adidas, Chanel, Google and Mars, asks a simple question: is your brand still relevant?

From On Running to Liquid Death to Atom Bank, new competitors are scrapping for customers. Nick argues that relevance isn't about being seen but about being felt, emotionally, culturally and contextually, and sets out principles for treating brand as a commercial lever shaped by people and culture and unlocked by real-time insight.

Key takeaways

  • Fame gets you remembered, but relevance gets you chosen, which is how challengers can overtake incumbents.
  • When sales erode, brands often double down on performance marketing, but buying performance without brand marketing rarely solves the problem.
  • Relevance is a discipline built every day; Volkswagen's self-deprecating, human advertising shows how a brand can recover and stay relevant.
  • Be selective with trends: resonance comes from knowing which macro and micro trends genuinely belong in your audience's world.
  • Separate category codes, such as safety, from your brand's true DNA, and get inside your audience's world rather than studying them in sterile focus groups.

Watch the full session on YouTube: Is Your Brand Still Relevant? - Nick Morris, Managing Director and Founder at Canvas8

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