It was the spring of last year.
We were in an online meeting, cameras on: our team and the client’s team. We had been invited to discuss solutions for the state of the business “at that moment.”
On the screen, two very different energies were clearly present. People who were enthusiastic, who sensed the need for change. And people who were more cautious, who understood that any serious decision had the potential to destabilize fragile balances.
In the months prior, the company had worked actively to clarify its messaging and solution portfolio: to align messages, partially rethink the solutions portfolio, and adjust the sales narrative.
But the major decision continued to stall.
The sales team kept doing what it knew how to do.
Only the results were slow to appear.
And the determination to truly change the category of play never emerged.
The entrepreneur was caught in the middle.
Between safety—which had already become an image of the past—and the fear of unsettling a team that was searching for stability.
Instinct told them it was time for a clear, assumed initiative at brand level. Proof came right after that meeting, when the conversation was taken over directly by the entrepreneur. More discussions followed about solutions, directions, opportunities.
The entrepreneur still felt the team did not yet have the level of conviction needed for real change. That the step could be perceived as forcing things, not as a direction.
But every time, something came up that postponed the next step.
This conversation stretched over a year and a half and is still in the zone of a project under analysis—not because of a lack of solutions, but because of a real tension, expressed by the entrepreneur themselves:
“I’m afraid to let go of an image built and worked on for 25 years.”
“My colleagues are more conservative than I am. I know we need to do something. There are daily searches and struggles in this direction, but we still haven’t put our hands on anything concrete.”
“I don’t think there’s a week that goes by without me thinking about how to launch this.”
And, inevitably:
“It’s not the right moment.”
The world is changing. The brand remains on hold.
Over that year and a half, the business environment did not stand still.
It was constantly under pressure: between political changes and ongoing international pressures generated by trade wars.
The war at our border, difficult to frame in a classic business context yet impossible to ignore, changed supply chains, plans, rhythms, and perceptions of safety.
And yet, none of this is essentially new.
The world has always been unstable.
Today, instability is simply more visible, faster, and present in every decision.
Meanwhile, business symptoms are becoming increasingly acute:
- messages no longer reach the market coherently,
- positioning is no longer clear,
- visual differentiation is unconvincing, lacking energy and spark,
- the brand lags behind the business.
And the decision continues to be delayed.
The real tension is not the context. It is the standstill.
Every time “it’s not the right moment” appears, it becomes clearer that the context is not the problem.
Because if you wait for the perfect moment, you will wait forever.
Branding asks something deeply uncomfortable of entrepreneurs: to stop reacting and start deciding.
It’s not the design that scares them.
Not the process.
But the fact that rebranding means an assumed repositioning in a world that already feels uncertain.
Making a broad strategic move in a turbulent context feels counterintuitive.
And yet, that is exactly when it is most needed.
Postponed branding does not remain neutral. It becomes a cost.
With every month of delay, the brand does not stay “the same.”
It erodes.
The market moves.
Competitors adapt.
Customers change their expectations.
And a brand that does not reinvent itself ends up operating in a reality that no longer exists.
The business did not stop during this year and a half, but delaying the decision amplified the tension between the company’s internal identity and its external image.
Branding became a recurring topic, but never a priority.
Until it becomes inevitable.
What this long conversation taught me
I understood, once again, that entrepreneurs do not avoid branding because they don’t consider it important.
They avoid it because branding requires a decision of stability in an unstable world.
They also avoid it because, although they rely on their team, they sometimes come to believe—incorrectly—that to project decisional strength they must first obtain total consensus.
When, in fact, a clear direction is what creates alignment.
But the world will not become calmer.
It will not become more predictable.
It will not wait.
After reading this text, they will understand that branding is not a project for quiet times, but an orientation tool precisely when everything is in motion—and that postponement does not reduce risk, it prolongs it.
One thing to do, right now
Ask yourself honestly:
“What invisible cost are we paying, month after month, by not making this decision?”
If the answer is confusion, fatigue, loss of relevance, or a brake on growth,
then perhaps the “right moment” will not come from the outside.
Perhaps it needs to be created.
Branding does not stop the world.
But it can give you a point of stability within it.
