*brings out whiteboard*

When I discovered Bring Me The Horizon in the Myspace days of middle school, ya girl was obsessed. They were originally a deathcore group. And I absolutely made my entire personality from about 2007-2014ish.

Fast forward to 2026 and their current music would give you absolute f*cking whipflash if you weren't following the journey because now they're basically pop rock/alternative music??? 🥲

Needless to say...They've pivoted a lot over the last 20 years.

And because they were my favorite band for so long, I'm able to look past the fact that I kinda sorta hate their new sh*t.

But lemme tell ya - every time this band shifted genres or basically put out a new album that was a drastic pivot... they lost people.

A lottt of people felt betrayed by the genre swaps.

But simultaneously, they gained people. They attracted a bigger audience when new waves of fans found a version of them they liked.

The die-hards (hi, it me) stayed through the eras we didn't love because we knew the heart of the thing was still in there. Everyone else (hi, it my husband) clung to one version and were BIG MAD the band they once loved is basically gone.

So wtf does this have to do with your brand and your content...

Welp. A lot, actually.

Because right now there's a version of you that exists on the internet (your brand is alwayssss showing) and people are either loving or hating that version of you.

So if you pull a major pivot - be that an intentional rebrand or you just pulling a wildcard move on a random Wednesday - there's a very good chance you'll start repelling those you once attracted (or vice versa).

A tangible example for you:

I was on a call with a client the other day who has a brand that essentially gives off a big warm-hug type of vibe. There are intentionally no rough-around-the-edges bits.

And on the call, my client made a comment about how sometimes she's always tempted to let the 'real her' come out in her content. Which basically consists of a lot of cursing and being a lot more blunt about certain things. 😂

And to be fair...she totally could do that if she wanted to.

There's no one right way to show up online.

Buttttt, the version she built is the version her audience signed up for, and switching frequencies now (without intention) would give her audience whiplash.

Like if one day she just dropped an f bomb in the middle of a tutorial and the next was back to her big warm hug vibes, her audience would be like "uhmmm?!?!?????"

However, if this were an intentional choice. Like if she felt like she was wearing a straitjacket within the confines of an unaligned brand, then yeah, you can ABSOLUTELY rebrand and full send this 2.0 version. She could totally do that.

You're always allowed to evolve.

Just look at Bring Me The Horizon for proof - they've evolved SO damn much, and who they once were isn't anything they are now, but the heart of who they are hasn't changed. Just the external bits.

And yeah, when you evolve, you're going to lose some people. That's just the name of the game.

Some people will only want the version of you that existed when they found you, and they're going to be weird about it when you change.

But that's their thing, not yours.

If the gains (aka finally feeling like yourself every time you show up to talk about your business) outweigh the losses, who tf cares if a few people get confused along the way??

You just have to make sure that the signals you're sending are the right signals for the audience you want to attract.

And of course, if you’ve got that nagging feeling that what you're putting out there doesn't quite match who you actually are, the Groundwork is where we can fix that.

Feel free to reply to this email if that sounds like the boat you're currently in, and we can chat more about it!

Catch ya next week,

Marissa

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