Brand ≠ Water Bottle: Why Digital Has to Come First

I was chatting with a friend about their most recent project where the client hired his agency to support their rebranding effort, and another agency to redesign the website—completely separate. No collaboration. The plan was: “Brand team does their thing, then web team will implement later.”
The web team would work on wireframes until the brand team shared the new brand assets and some “notional designs”—aka fantasy comps that look slick but fall apart in the real world.

Luckily, the two agencies had the wisdom to work together and meet in the middle. The bridge got built. Barely. The client? Saved from a near disaster. But let’s be honest—it should’ve never been that close of a call.

There was a time when "brand" and "digital" lived in totally separate worlds. Brand teams would spend months crafting a new identity, then toss it over the fence to the digital team with a “Good luck!” and hope it all magically worked online.

If your company is still thinking this way - you're living in the Jurassic era. The digital lens has to come first. Before you comp up how the logo looks on a water bottle, ask yourself how it functions in a responsive header, on a mobile device, or inside an app.

(Brand development is like Plinko - yes, I said Plinko—because brand decisions fall through layer after layer of execution filters, and if you don’t plan for where those chips land, it’s chaos.)

Brand and digital can’t be an either/or anymore. They have to move together, from day one. Otherwise, you’re building a shiny brand that cracks the moment it hits the screen.