[This article expands on the ideas I shared in “Branding Doesn’t Fit on a Screen,” where I explored the limits of digital branding and the need to go beyond the pixel to build an emotional connection with the user.]
The Screen Paradox: Equalizer, Limiter, and Battlefield
The screen of a device—whether a computer, tablet, refrigerator, or mobile phone—is much more than a viewing surface. It is the primary interface between the user and the digital world, the space where information is projected, actions are executed, and the experience is built.
In the digital ecosystem, this screen operates as a formidable equalizer. An emerging brand can project the same visual solidity as a giant with decades of history.
In turn, ecommerce has democratized market access, allowing startups to validate hypotheses, test products or services, and detect traction signals with contained costs. It is, without a doubt, a formidable tool to penetrate markets and adjust the value proposition in real-time, facilitating the “fail fast, learn faster.”
But that very ubiquity that equalizes also limits. Scale, achieved solely through digital assets, becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to maximize. Everyone can “look” big with good branding, leading to a fierce ad-pact war where the cost of acquisition (CAC) is hardly sustainable in the long term and highly likely to increase.
Faced with this pixel saturation, coupled with the over-excitement of proposals appealing to an affective reaction (all apparently with their concept and storytelling), the user may experience low transactional loyalty, and the brand may dissolve into the feed if it does not offer an emotional or physical anchor beyond the product itself or a specific offer.
The Concept as Irreplaceable Intangible Asset
If we all have access to good materials and clean branding, what ultimately matters is what lies behind the appearance: the concept (provided we have accurately identified the underlying insights).
In sectors like fashion or jewelry, for example, the product is built on pillars such as quality (objectifiable) and design (with greater doses of subjectivity despite trends). But without a conceptual layer that articulates these attributes and connects them with an emotion or identity beyond functional necessity, the product falls short.
“The concept is the brand’s narrative infrastructure and its true moat—that sustainable competitive advantage that can shield a company from its competitors, like a ditch protects a castle.”
It is not just the story; it is the Why that guides design, packaging, communication, and customer service. This coherence articulates the design so that it is not an aesthetic whim but a declaration of intent.
It is what allows a brand to move from offering a sales price to capturing a brand premium and leap from a more or less fleeting notoriety to a solid, meaning sustained, reputation.
Does it sound easy? Neither easy nor fast. We are talking about a narrative that cannot be improvised: it must be built and maintained so that the brand does not depend solely on the screen, but transcends it.
The Logical Evolution: From DNVB to Hybrid (and Resilient) Brands
DNVBs (Digital Native Vertical Brands) understood this—some quicker than others. They were born 100% digital—Hawkers, Glossier, Warby Parker—but none have remained there.
They have developed a physical presence, recognizing that physical retail is not a concession to the online model, but a strategic extension. The store or the pop-up acts as a point of legitimization, seeking to eliminate the friction caused by digital distrust, while also serving as a catalyst for the user bond:
- Activates new perception dynamics: The transition from the digital to the physical environment legitimizes the brand, gives it tangibility, and reinforces trust.
- Accelerates identity construction: The physical space allows the brand concept to be expressed in a sensory, experiential, and direct way, which ecommerce can hardly achieve.
- Multiplies touchpoints: It not only sells but generates content, interaction, and synergies with the digital channel.
- Unlocks new audiences: Some customers only discover or trust a brand when they see it “on the street,” having gone unnoticed until that moment.
Successful hybridization consists of conceptual omnichannelity. While the digital channel handles performance, discovery, and rapid transactions, the physical channel assumes social validation, community, and the sensory experience.
In this sense, everything from the architecture, product display, and POS materials to the scent or music of the store is the tangible manifestation of the concept that was born in the pixel.
“When the digital channel shows its limits, what makes the difference is not the algorithm (that will come later), but first the brand’s ability to convert its concept into experience, narrative, and sustained presence.”
Fashion as an Example: From Garment to Purpose
A clear example is found in fashion, an industry that has mastered the digital channel to inspire, segment, amplify, and approach its audience like few others. Social commerce, the rise of creator-led content, and the speed of micro-trends have made the screen its main showcase and discovery engine.
But, precisely because of this, it has also been exposed to its limits. If there is no superior conceptual layer that:
- Unifies attributes and functionalities (when they are not purely emotional)
- Defines the problem it solves
- Builds a solid concept
- Translates it into a consistent narrative
- Declines it into coherent campaigns, formats, and channels
- And, above all, appeals directly to emotion
… what may remain is just another garment in the feed and, in the medium term (to use an automotive simile), the engine eventually seizes up.
In an environment where supply overwhelmingly exceeds available attention, the competitive advantage is the capacity to move people emotionally and become a meaning that transcends the product or “solution” itself.
The Screen Limits, The Memory Gives Meaning
In the end, everything we have been discussing converges at the same point: we must transcend the screen, because the screen—as much as it allows us to measure everything—also equalizes, flattens, and limits us.
What is not replicable is the emotion we are capable of awakening, the story we manage to embed in memory, the invisible thread that connects someone with something they feel is their own. In a world saturated with options, we do not remember what we saw and/or touched; we remember what moves us.
