Building Brands That Break Through: Insights from Web Summit 2025

Pearlfisher Global CEO Jason Brown attended Web Summit Vancouver 2025, sharing strategic insights on creating authentic brands in an age of sameness. Watch the full panel discussion here.

The Velocity of Change: Finding Your Brand’s North Star

The pace of change in today’s market isn’t just fast, it’s accelerating exponentially. As Jason explained during the panel, “The notion of change is something that we’re all really familiar with and comfortable with, but the velocity of the change is what we’re optimizing for—how quickly things are moving.”

This rapid pace creates a critical challenge for brands: identifying which elements must remain consistent to maintain authenticity while determining what needs to flex and adapt. The key is being absolutely clear about your core brand assets, which are fundamental elements that connect with your primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences over time.

But here’s the crucial insight: even change has its tipping point. In today’s market, being dogmatic about every aspect of your brand would be a mistake, but you must identify the elements that simply cannot change over time.

The Nike Principle: Brand Purpose at Altitude

When it comes to navigating rapid change while maintaining authenticity, Nike provides a masterclass in strategic brand management. As Jason noted, “If Nike is ‘if you have a body, you are an athlete,’ that is their evergreen value proposition. It will never change, has never changed over time, but they have shown up many different ways, season to season, region to region, but don’t move away from that core notion.”

The lesson here is about authoring your brand purpose at the right altitude: high enough to be aspirational and flexible, yet specific enough to guide decision-making. This requires making the right investment in defining your core brand elements: your brand purpose, positioning, values, and reason for existence.

Interestingly, Nike’s recent challenges illustrate what happens when brands drift from their core. Their shift toward fashion and away from performance allowed competitors like On to gain ground. “The over-indexing into the fashion side of the equation, moving away from performance, and then brands like On just start eating their lunch,” Jason observed. Nike’s current efforts to return to their performance roots demonstrate the importance of staying true to your fundamental brand promise.

AI and the Evolution of Design: Still About the Person Behind the Pencil

The democratization of design tools—from desktop publishing to AI—has consistently sparked concerns about the future of professional design. Having witnessed this evolution throughout his career, Jason offers a reassuring perspective: “I remember a time when I started my career as a designer, where you couldn’t be a designer if you couldn’t draw. That was a baseline requirement and a skill that was required to participate in the space. Then desktop publishing came along, and everyone started calling themselves a designer.”

Now, with AI as the latest tool, the fundamental principle remains unchanged: garbage in, garbage out. The skills required may evolve—from drawing to programming to prompting—but success still demands the right sensibilities, thinking patterns, and strategic insight.

As Jason puts it, “It’s the new pencil, and it still requires someone to use it.” The technology may increase volume and speed, enabling us to do more faster, but the critical decisions like choosing the right concept, the right asset, and the right strategic direction, cannot be handed over to technology.

How Brands Can Acheive Wantability

Every brand’s ambition should be driving desire and creating value, which Jason describes as “wantability.” Achieving this requires focusing on essential elements: Resonance, Distinction, Relevance, Cohesiveness, and Authenticity. Success isn’t about perfecting one or two of these elements—it’s about balancing all five, dialing them up and down over time to ensure you’re delivering on each consistently.

Breaking Through the Sameness

In an age of AI slop and algorithmic homogenization, brands have both an opportunity and a responsibility. The very prevalence of sameness creates space to cut through, but only for brands willing to be authentically themselves.

The path forward isn’t about chasing every trend or algorithm update. Instead, it’s about establishing your unshakeable core while remaining adaptable at the margins. It’s about making strategic investments in understanding who you are at the highest level, then having the discipline to stay true to that vision while the world changes around you.

As we continue to navigate this landscape of rapid change and technological advancement, remember: the brands that will thrive are those that combine strategic clarity with authentic expression. They understand that standing out isn’t about being different for difference’s sake—it’s about being courageously, consistently yourself.