The Power of Likability: Why Brands Must Earn Affection to Succeed

Most brands are terrified of being disliked. They sand off every interesting edge in the boardroom, chase consensus in focus groups, and churn out bland,inoffensive marketing that everyone promptly ignores. In their quest to avoid offending anyone, they achieve something far worse: they become invisible.

That’s not a safe strategy; it’s a death sentence.

The brutal truth is that likability in branding isn’t about being universally loved. It’s about being distinctive enough to be remembered. It’s the science of engineering a brand personality that is authentic, relatable, and psychologically resonant. At CUT THRU, we don’t build brands that are just “nice.” We build brands that are unforgettably themselves, because in a world drowning in sameness, the greatest risk isn’t being disliked—it’s being disregarded.
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The Cost of Being Boring: Why Inoffensive Brands Fail

The corporate graveyard is filled with brands that played it safe. They had a decent product, a professional logo, and a marketing budget, but they lacked a soul. This isn’t a trivial, “fluffy” problem; it’s a commercial catastrophe. As the Edelman Trust Barometer shows, 74% of consumers will abandon a brand that feels inauthentic. Blandness is just inauthenticity in a beige trench coat.

This failure stems from a deep misunderstanding of how memory works. As marketing scientists Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk have proven, brands don’t grow by converting legions of hyper-loyal fans. They grow by building broad “mental availability”—simply, by being easily thought of in a buying situation. A bland, forgettable brand has zero mental availability. It’s a ghost in the marketplace. Likability isn’t about creating rabid fans; it’s about building the distinctive mental shortcuts that lead to a sale.
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The Likability Engine: A Framework for Engineering Authentic Brand Affinity

You can’t force someone to like you, but you can systematically create the conditions for affinity to emerge. Our framework moves beyond guesswork, using a data-driven, psychological approach to build brands that are not just recognisable, but genuinely likable.
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Pillar 1: Distinctive Assets (Be Recognisable)

The Psychology: The foundation of likability is familiarity. We are psychologically wired to prefer things we recognise. As Byron Sharp argues, distinctive brand assets—logos, colours, taglines, sounds—are the building blocks of this familiarity. They create mental real estate.The Dark Tactic: Mimicking the assets of a market leader to borrow their familiarity, which only leads to confusion and a reputation as a cheap copycat.The Ethical Counter: Build your own unique, unmissable assets. For our client Hyloh, a premium architectural hardware brand, their distinctive assets are their product designs themselves. The minimalist, clean lines of their hardware are so consistent and unique that they function as a brand signature. This makes their products instantly recognisable to architects and designers, building a sense of familiarity and trust in a crowded market.
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Pillar 2: A Human Voice (Be Relatable)

The Psychology: People don’t form relationships with corporations; they form them with personalities. A brand’s voice—the tone and style of its communication—is the most powerful tool for creating a sense of personality.The Dark Tactic: Faking empathy with contrived “we care” messaging that isn’t backed by action, or adopting a generic, overly polished corporate voice that sounds like a robot in a suit.The Ethical Counter: Develop a genuine, human, and consistent brand voice. For Paperform, a powerful SaaS tool, their brand voice is a core asset. It’s helpful, clever, and slightly quirky without being unprofessional. Their help-desk articles and UI copy sound like they were written by a smart, capable friend, not a committee. This relatable voice builds a powerful, likable connection that turns users into advocates.
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Pillar 3: Shared Values (Be Admirable)

The Psychology: People are drawn to others who share their beliefs and values. We like people, and brands, that we admire. This creates a deep, emotional bond that transcends the transactional nature of a purchase.The Dark Tactic: “Woke-washing”—publicly adopting a popular social cause for commercial gain without any real, meaningful commitment to it.The Ethical Counter: Genuinely embed your values into your business model. For Blossom, an investment app, their brand is built on a clear and authentic mission: to democratise investing and empower a new generation to build wealth. This isn’t just a tagline; it informs their product design, their content, and their community engagement. Users don’t just use Blossom; they like what Blossom stands for, creating a powerful sense of shared identity.
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Pillar 4: Psychological Value (Be Delightful)

The Psychology: As Rory Sutherland, the master of behavioural science, explains, sometimes the smallest, most seemingly irrational details can create immense psychological value and charm.The Dark Tactic: Using manipulative UX tricks that create a fleeting sense of delight but ultimately feel coercive, like a confusing countdown timer or a guilt-tripping pop-up.The Ethical Counter: Add genuine, unexpected moments of delight. For Talent Recap, an entertainment media brand, we helped them inject humour and personality into their social media copy. Instead of dryly reporting on results, their posts often have a witty, insider tone that delights their audience. It’s a small touch that makes the brand feel less like a sterile news outlet and more like an entertaining friend.
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Implementation Guide: An Ethical Likability Audit

1. Audit Your Brand Personality: Is your brand’s voice distinctive or generic? We conducted an audit for a client that revealed their tone was indistinguishable from their top three competitors. We worked with them to build a bolder, more human voice like Paperform’s, which boosted trust.
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2. Map Your Distinctive Assets: Do you have a truly unique set of brand assets like Hyloh? Or are you using the same stock photo styles and colour palettes as everyone else in your category? Invest in originality.
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3. Run Split Tests on Tone: Test a more personality-driven, authentic headline or CTA against your standard corporate copy. In our double-blind tests, the version with a human touch almost always drives higher engagement.
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4. Showcase Your Social Proof: Use real testimonials from real customers. The authentic voices of your users are one of the most powerful and likable assets you have.
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5. Seek an Expert Opinion: It’s difficult to judge how “likable” your own brand is. An objective audit from the best branding agency in Sydney can provide the external perspective needed to identify where your brand is falling flat.
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Common Likability Pitfalls to Avoid

• Bland Messaging: Playing it safe is the most dangerous strategy of all. A boring brand is an invisible brand.
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• Fake Empathy: A contrived “we’re here for you” message during a crisis, without any real action to back it up, does more harm than good.
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• Copycat Tones: If your brand voice sounds just like the market leader, you’re not a competitor; you’re a follower.
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• Over-Polishing: A brand voice that is too slick, too perfect, and too corporate feels inauthentic and untrustworthy. Don’t be afraid to be a little human.
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The Future of Likable Branding

As AI begins to write more of the world’s marketing copy, a genuine, human, and distinctive brand personality will become the ultimate competitive advantage. It will be the one thing that can’t be easily replicated by a machine. The brands that win the future will be those that have mastered the art and science of being authentically themselves. Likability, backed by data and grounded in a real personality, is the only sustainable path to growth.

Is your brand fading into the background? Partner with CUT THRU, the leading branding agency in Sydney and New York, to build a distinctive, likable brand that gets noticed.
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Click here to get a quote for elevating your brand’s trust and growth.

About The Author

Jonathan Sankey is founder of CUT THRU, recognised for conversion-centred design and product-market fit testing. His evidence-based approach has driven growth for global brands and unicorn startups in Australia and America. A Netty Award winner (2023, 2024), he blends data with execution.

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