Jessica Walsh is one of the most influential designers of her generation. As the founder of the New York–based creative studio &Walsh, she has built a career around bold visual ideas and honest reflections on the realities of the creative industry. In this opinion piece, she unpacks one of design’s most common misconceptions — that great branding can save a bad product:

Design can get people in the door. A killer logo, sleek website, bold colour palette — sure, that’ll turn heads. But if what’s behind it doesn’t deliver, no identity system in the world can save it. In fact, a great brand might make a bad product crash even harder, because people feel even more duped. The pattern is always the same: strong visuals, weak substance, big let-down.

Quibi is a great example of this. They spent a ton building up their brand and ad campaigns, but after six months the company folded. The build-up and enormous ad spend made the failure all the more of a spectacle.

Fyre Festival is another modern example we will all never forget. If it had been marketed as a small experimental event, maybe the disaster would’ve been contained. But because the branding (and the price tag) promised paradise, it became one of the most talked-about failures of our time.

Branding amplifies. If the product is great, branding makes it x10. If the product is broken, branding just makes the failure louder and faster.

So what does great branding actually do? I don’t believe it really “invents” anything; instead it reveals what’s honest.

A huge part of what we do as branding experts is dig. We spend hours interviewing founders, talking to stakeholders, understanding the origin story, the motivations, the thing that keeps them up at night. We’re looking for what’s genuinely unique about them, not what they think they’re supposed to say.

Sometimes founders want to position themselves a certain way because that’s what they see competitors doing, or what they think investors want to hear. But if it doesn’t ring true to who they actually are, it won’t work. It’s sheep in wolf’s clothing. People will sniff it out.

I worked with a founder who wanted to position their brand as “premium” and “exclusive” and “trendy” because they saw competitors in that space getting funded. But when we dug into their actual story, they were kind of boring and liked things really traditional. That was the more interesting story.

Boring can be just as cool as trendy. You see it on social too — people love following people that are real and honest, not just the hot twenty-somethings. The old grandma who tells it like it is, the dorky guy who obsesses over the latest science: you don’t have to be cool to be cool.

That’s what honest branding does. It doesn’t dress you up as something you’re not. It helps you lean in and articulate what you are.

In the age of AI, being true to who you are will matter more now than ever. AI can generate images, graphics, or even brand strategy in seconds. Plug in your industry and competitive landscape, and out comes positioning, brand pillars, tone-of-voice guidelines. The problem? It’s generic. It’s what the algorithm thinks you should be, based on pattern-matching thousands of other brands.

People can feel when something is templated. Customers are craving authenticity because they can’t trust what they’re seeing anymore — deepfakes, AI-generated imagery, chatbot copy that all sounds the same. When a brand identity has a genuine story rooted in something true about the founders, mission or product, that is incredibly valuable, and something we always push for. Otherwise we are just creating a facelift, not a brand with real value.

Some classic examples are Apple’s “Think Different” and Patagonia’s commitment to the environment. Apple’s “Think Different” worked because Apple actually was different. Steve Jobs genuinely believed in the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. That wasn’t marketing spin — the branding was a lens on his actual worldview.

Patagonia works because they actually make durable products and genuinely invest in environmental causes. Yvon Chouinard is a climber who legitimately cares about protecting wild places. The brand is an extension of who he is.

When branding is rooted in something true, it becomes powerful and lasting.

Designers always ask me what the secret to great branding is. The truth is it starts with a great product, or the team behind the brand. The truth every designer needs to know is that branding can’t save a bad product — and we shouldn’t even try. Our job is to find what’s genuinely valuable and help people see it. If there’s nothing genuinely valuable, or the client is trying to be something they’re fundamentally not, we should have the knowledge to pass on the job.

Before you think about your logo or colour palette, ask yourself: is this thing actually good? Does it solve a real problem? And are you being honest about who this company is — or are you trying to sound like what you think a successful company in this category is supposed to sound like?

If the answer is no, stop. The product needs to get fixed first. Get clear on your actual values and story.

The best branding happens when we dig deep enough to find what’s genuinely true and unique, then make that truth impossible to ignore.

An opinion and story written by Jessica Walsh from &Walsh