When people hear the word strategy, their minds often jump to chess. A black-and-white board. Equal information. Cold logic. Predictable outcomes. It’s a neat metaphor — but it’s the wrong one for understanding brand strategy. In reality, brand strategy isn’t about playing with all the facts. It’s about making confident moves in an unpredictable game.
In chess, all the pieces are visible. Both players can see the entire board. Every move is open to analysis. The best player usually wins — not because they’re lucky, but because they’ve made better decisions.
In poker, the opposite is true. Players act on partial information. Only you know your hand — and what’s visible on the table — but not what’s hidden in your opponents’ hands or minds. One can play perfectly and still lose. You can play recklessly and still win. Even elite poker players win only about 60% of the time across a full session.
Now ask yourself: Which of these feels more like the real world of branding?
Your brand lives in the minds of your audience. It’s built on expectations, not assets. That’s why we often ask clients in workshops to swap the word brand for expectation. When you make that shift, everything changes.
You don’t know:
What cards your competitors are holding — their tech stack, human capital, or secret partnerships.
What algorithm updates might bury your content marketing overnight.
What economic or political ripple, thousands of kilometres away, might upend your perfectly timed campaign.
Even if you make all the right moves — great strategy, clean execution — your audience might not see it, care about it, or trust it yet. Just like poker, there are hands where the river turns against you at the last moment.
In 2017–2018, South Africa experienced the world’s deadliest listeriosis outbreak, traced to processed meats produced by Enterprise Foods, a subsidiary of Tiger Brands, at their Polokwane facility. The outbreak resulted in over 1,000 confirmed cases and more than 200 deaths.
Despite having no involvement, Eskort — another processed meat brand — suffered significant collateral damage. Consumers, confused by similar red logos and the shared initial “E” in their brand names, incorrectly associated Eskort with the outbreak. Sales plummeted, and the brand had to work hard to clarify the misunderstanding and rebuild trust.
Eskort played no hand in the outbreak — but still lost the round.
This is the unpredictable nature of brand perception. You don’t always win or lose based on your own decisions. Sometimes, the wrong association or the timing of another player’s move changes the outcome entirely.
The best plan is to do whatever you can to stay in the game. You measure, adapt, and regroup. You don’t treat branding like a one-shot campaign with a checkmate in sight. Instead, you learn to read the table, gather signals, and play the long game.
And crucially — you don’t quit just because the last hand didn’t go your way.
Before your next brand play, ask:
What assumptions are we betting on?
What information are we missing?
What’s our response if the odds shift mid-hand?
You also allow for a reasonable amount of flex in your brand — not a compromise on your values, but a willingness to experiment with how you show up in the minds of your audience. Because while we may know some of the variables, we also know there are unknowns — and worse, unknown unknowns. So we brace for them. And we stop swallowing the fairy dust that tells us:
We know exactly who our customers are.
We know exactly who we are to them.
We know exactly where we should play.
We know exactly how we will win.
Because we don’t.
Branding isn’t about perfect control. It’s about strategic resilience.
Dealer, next hand please.
Branding School is a free, 6-part strategic framework that helps you clarify your brand, attract better clients, and create content that converts.
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