The
Toniq
July 10,
2025
2025
The Trust Tightrope: How Brands Can Leverage or Lose Asymmetrical Trust
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
This is the essence of asymmetrical trust, a concept that might seem abstract but has powerful implications for how brands engage with their audiences.
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July 9,
2025
2025
Unscalable but Unforgettable: Why Small Moments Matter Most
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Because it proved someone was paying attention. It wasn’t scripted. It wasn’t templated. It was human. And that small gesture meant more to me than any influencer campaign, ad spot, or loyalty discount ever could.
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July 8,
2025
2025
From Authenticity to Coherence: How Brands Earn Trust
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Because here’s the paradox: the moment you try to be authentic, you’re already performing. Authenticity, by nature, resists artifice. But branding is artifice — even at its best.
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July 7,
2025
2025
Stop Sounding Smart. Start Saying Something Real.
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
The problem isn’t that brands are talking about change. The problem is that they’re all using the same tired signals to do it, so much so that the language of innovation has collapsed into a kind of corporate white noise.
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July 4,
2025
2025
The Last Differentiator: Why Brand Voice Still Matters
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Tone is the emotional undercurrent of your brand’s language. It’s not just what you say, but how you make someone feel while you’re saying it.
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July 3,
2025
2025
Forget Better. Build a Brand People Remember.
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Today, differentiation has collapsed under the weight of its own ubiquity. Everyone is claiming to be faster, smarter, simpler, cheaper, cleaner, more advanced, more sustainable, more thoughtful, more inclusive.
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July 2,
2025
2025
Your Customer Isn't a Persona—Stop Treating Them Like One
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
But personas aren’t people. They’re shortcuts. And more often than not, they’re a performance—a mask we make so we can pretend we’re connecting.
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July 1,
2025
2025
Stop Ghosting Your Customers: The Post-Purchase Opportunity
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
For years, branding has focused on the path to purchase. Funnels, awareness campaigns, consideration stages—all roads leading to the golden moment of conversion. But here’s the truth: the buy isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the relationship.
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June 30,
2025
2025
The Death of Positioning: How Movements Are Rewriting the Rules of Branding
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
For decades, “positioning” was the holy grail of branding. Coined by Ries and Trout in the 1980s, the idea was revolutionary: own a place in the customer’s mind, carve out a mental niche, and hammer it home with consistency.
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June 27,
2025
2025
What’s That Smell? Oh, Just Your Expired Brand Strategy
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Turns out, brands have a fridge too. It's not stainless steel, but it does hum along in the background—full of things we thought we’d use, ideas we once loved, and leftover campaigns we keep telling ourselves might still be good if we just heat them up the right way.
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June 26,
2025
2025
Bringing Back the Big Idea: Why Long Copy Still Matters
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
There was a time when advertising didn’t fear silence, space, or storytelling. When headlines invited curiosity, and body copy had the room to build something more than a call to action, it could build a world.
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June 25,
2025
2025
When to Drop the Needle: Timing, Trust, and the Power of Morale
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Morale isn’t the same as motivation. Motivation can be sparked by deadlines, bonuses, ambition, or the fear of failure. But morale is deeper. It’s emotional. It’s cultural.
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June 24,
2025
2025
The Need for Deed: Rediscovering Romance in Modern Brands
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
Romance in branding doesn’t mean red roses and candlelight. It’s not about grand overtures or dripping sentimentality. Instead, it’s about the emotional architecture of a brand—how it makes people feel, what ideals it evokes, and how deeply it connects on a human level.
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June 23,
2025
2025
Absurd Branded Products: When Does Weird Actually Work?
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
But then—sometimes—you get a glimpse of a brand making an unexpected leap, one that has you saying, Wait, what? Why would anyone think that’s a good idea?
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June 20,
2025
2025
The Existential Backbone of a Brand, With Thanks to Kierkegaard
By
Paul Kiernan
Paul Kiernan
To him, truth wasn’t about reciting facts or adopting the right opinions. It was about committing to something so deeply that it reordered your life. It was messy, terrifying, and often inconvenient. But it was yours.
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