Brandmaxxing or Debranding: Pick Your Side

There's a trend called looksmaxxing that says appearance is everything, and optimizing it is just pragmatism. Apply that same logic to nonprofits and you get an interesting thought experiment: what happens when an organization goes all in on brand? And what happens when one deliberately strips brand away entirely?

This episode explores the spectrum between "brandmaxxing" and "debranding," two extremes that most organizations will never fully inhabit but that reveal something important about how the sector thinks about visibility. Brandmaxxing means pouring maximum resources, attention, and intention into becoming the authority on your issue. Debranding means stepping back entirely, taking no credit, and letting the work dissolve into the ecosystem. The social impact sector has been structurally imbalanced toward the debranding end for decades, and the reluctance to invest in brand often masquerades as virtue. But humans are influenced by brand the same way they're influenced by appearance, and refusing to play the game doesn't make the game go away.

Then there's the question of who carries the brand. Institutional trust is in decline, and people increasingly follow people rather than logos. That creates real opportunity for individual-led storytelling, but it also creates a single point of failure. When a charismatic executive director leaves, they can take the organization's identity with them. The key distinction is that the individual should be the channel for the message, not the brand itself. You still need to be yourself, you can't be a shell spokesperson reading the company line, but the story you're telling belongs to the mission, not to you personally.

The episode concludes that the instinct to stay behind the scenes, to say "I don't want to add to the noise," often feels like humility but is actually its own kind of arrogance. It's the belief that you're somehow above the game, that your work is too important for self-promotion. But if the work matters, it deserves to be seen. And opting out of visibility has real consequences that too many leaders aren't honest with themselves about.
 

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:00] The looksmaxxing trend as a lens for brand strategy 
[00:01:00] Defining brandmaxxing vs. debranding as a spectrum 
[00:04:25] Where brand investment crosses into unhealthy territory 
[00:06:25] Why brand is a game you have to play, even in social impact 
[00:07:00] Debranding to make space for partners: noble or misguided? 
[00:08:50] Trust through depth vs. trust through visibility 
[00:11:00] "Putting ourselves out of business" and why that's oversimplified 
[00:14:00] People follow people, not logos: the Amanda Litman insight 
[00:16:50] Truth and clarity over presentation and performance 
[00:17:50] The single point of failure problem with individual-led brands 
[00:22:00] The sector's historical imbalance toward invisibility 
[00:23:00] False humility and the arrogance of staying behind the scenes

Notable Quotes:

[00:06:30]: "Humans are influenced by brand. You can be humble about it, but at some level, you got to realize you have to play the game." Eric Ressler 

[00:07:30]: "Is there valor in debranding to make space for others versus brandmaxxing, which would be like, take as much of that pie as you can?" Jonathan Hicken 

[00:10:10]: "I would consider a meeting with a funder in a one-on-one situation an act of brand, because either you are going to show up in coherence with your stated brand values or not." Eric Ressler 

[00:10:45]: "Is there valor in debranding to make space for others, especially if we're working with underserved communities?" Jonathan Hicken 

[00:23:15]: "Get over yourself, because that is actually kind of a pretentious point of view. You're not saying you're not good enough. You're saying you're too good to put yourself out there." Eric Ressler 

Resources & Links:

• Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something — Prior Spotlight episode.
• Amanda Litman’s Substack
• Run for Something
• Science, Solutions, Santa Cruz  

P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let's talk about your goals »

Full Transcript:

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:00]: Eric, a couple weeks ago there was this SNL video going around where one of the SNL cast members was parodying a looksmaxxer.

Eric Ressler [00:00:10]: Oh yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:10]: Did you see this?

Eric Ressler [00:00:10]: The looksmaxxing.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:10]: I instantly started thinking about our work and I was like, "Is there such a thing as brandmaxxing?" And then I was like, Eric Ressler is definitely a brand maxxer.

Eric Ressler [00:00:20]: I'm not even going to argue with that one. I think I should update my LinkedIn profile, Brandmaxxing for Social Impact.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:25]: Please do that. So today I want to put you on the hot seat a little bit and I want to ask you some tough questions about brandmaxxing and see where we land at the end of it.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:45]: So just to start things off, when I say brandmaxxing, I'm talking about an organization, its leadership, its board in some cases, going all in on brand. It's almost like the Eric Ressler method, taking everything you say and implementing it a thousand percent. And being the best of the best at branding in every way that you and I have talked about on the show and more. Max resources, max attention, everything. And then the opposite end of the spectrum is debranding. So this is deliberately going out of your way to remove all elements of brand from your organization. Almost like a total decentralized play where you as the organization are taking zero credit for your work.

Eric Ressler [00:01:35]: Okay.

Jonathan Hicken [00:01:35]: Now, I actually don't know that that exists in reality, but just as a thought experiment. This is what I mean by brandmaxxing and debranding. And so when I started to dig into the implications of these two ends of the spectrum, I came up with a whole list of questions for you. So the first is if you think about core philosophy of these two ends of the spectrum. One is humility. And we've talked about this in past episodes, not being visible could actually just come from this moral place of being humble and not wanting to get into it. And so success is really measured by just how embedded you are in the ecosystem of impact that you're working on quietly.

Eric Ressler [00:02:25]: Okay.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:25]: The opposite end of the spectrum is brandmaxxing where dominance and distinction is really the goal, where success is measured by becoming the authority on some particular kind of work. Do you see any reason when it comes to core philosophy not to be a brandmaxxer?

Eric Ressler [00:02:50]: So I love this, first of all. I just want to say that. I'm not a deep student of looksmaxxing, so I should get that out of the way. It keeps coming up on my feeds. So my understanding, please correct me if you have a different understanding about this. I've seen this SNL skit, but I haven't actually watched it. Looksmaxxing from my understanding is this philosophy that appearance matters so much in modern culture, especially if you're a young person, and that it's a good strategy to become as attractive as you possibly can by any means necessary. I think the main dude, is it Clavakar or whatever? Something like that. He literally smashes his face with a hammer to restructure his jawbone.

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:40]: I haven't actually witnessed that, but that's the claim.

Eric Ressler [00:03:40]: So to me, that is clearly unhealthy from not just a physical standpoint, but it's an unhealthy philosophy. So that's where I would say, can you get there from a branding standpoint? Whereas getting close to that, but not quite that far, let's take diet, exercise, sleep, things that will have a positive impact on your appearance, maybe even self-care and your apparel and things that matter and that are by any normal standpoint a good thing to do. I think there's a version of brand that I advocate for. So I want to just put it on the table. I don't want to say I'm a brand maxxer to the point where it's like brand is the only thing that matters. Impact doesn't matter at all. All you need to do is become the authority. You shouldn't be humble about your work. So I think there is a version of brandmaxxing that, just like looksmaxxing or my understanding of looksmaxxing, can go too far.

Jonathan Hicken [00:04:45]: Okay. So there's an unhealthy version of investment in brand. And so for you, what's the line?

Eric Ressler [00:04:50]: So first of all, I would say I can't think of a single example of that in the social impact space. Examples that I might think about would be maybe some personal brands where people have built up a brand about themselves that is so powerful that they basically become audience captured where they stand for something and they have so much financial incentive and audience incentive that they're even maybe sometimes going against their own self-interest or going against their true core beliefs or identity. That would be an example of brandmaxxing gone too far. There might be some examples in the social impact space of orgs that, maybe in the political space where there's so much investment in donor acquisition and just spamming people and you might consider that in the purview of brand or under the brand umbrella at some level, communication certainly, where as soon as it starts to be at odds with your identity and your beliefs and your values as an organization, however that shows up, to me that would go from strategically sound brandmaxxing to unhealthy short-term thinking brandmaxxing.

And I want to say one more thing that's interesting in this thought experiment around brandmaxxing. There is, I think in the looksmaxxing community, this pragmatism element to it that I think it's taken too far, but is rooted in some truth, which is that humans are influenced by appearance. And I think there's a parallel in brand and in social impact, which is that humans are influenced by brand.

Jonathan Hicken [00:06:35]: And stories.

Eric Ressler [00:06:35]: And stories. And so when you talk about the other side, this humility side, you can do that, but at some level, you got to realize you have to play the game at some level. And I think there is a way to play the game in a healthy values-aligned way that is just a net positive.

Jonathan Hicken [00:06:50]: Okay. Let's talk about debranding and brandmaxxing in the context of an ecosystem of work. So in the debranding example, when you're a minimalist, maybe it creates more room for your partners to be more visible. So imagining visibility as almost this zero sum game. And so if you're debranded, you're creating more space for partners who are doing similar work to be seen or to be uplifted, especially if we're working with underserved communities, communities of color, et cetera. Is there valor in debranding to make space for others versus brandmaxxing, which would be like, take as much of that pie as you can, even if it means that other people in your space are getting less attention?

Eric Ressler [00:07:40]: Well, I don't think it's a zero sum game. So in that example, I think it's a good example. Let's say there is an org that has a lot of attention already, go-to org for any given issue or community, and they want to debrand to make more space for other people. I think that is a worse strategy than leveraging their platform and their power and their brand prowess to uplift those other people and to give them a platform that they don't have yet. And so you are still in that case as that parent organization or that more known organization, still brandmaxxing at some level, but you are sharing the power of your brand to uplift someone else in the ecosystem.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:30]: Fair enough. So let's move on to this idea of trust building. Because I think a lot of what we end up talking about in storytelling and positioning and messaging is building trust, building credibility. And so there's a version of debranding where you are earning trust from the depths of your relationships that are happening in the 3D world and the real world, where brandmaxxing is almost more of a breadth play, a breadth of social proof where you are earning trust through scale of visibility and almost celebrity. Is there any qualitative difference in how we're building trust on these two hypothetical ends of the spectrum?

Eric Ressler [00:09:20]: Well, I would push back a little bit on the idea that doing things in the 3D world is not brandmaxxing. I think that we think about the word brand and sometimes we think about your logo or your content, but brand is really how you show up in the world at large. And to me, when I think about building a brand, it's about having clarity about who you actually are, self-awareness around that, a conviction about who you're becoming. We've talked about these concepts recently a lot and they're top of mind for me, and a consistent set of actions and truth to reinforce those things. And so to me, yes, that's your brand identity system and your website and your messaging and your communications, but it's just as much, if not more, important that your real world actions, small or large, reinforce your brand too.

I would consider a meeting with a funder in a one-on-one situation an act of brand in one way or another, because either you are going to show up in coherence with your stated brand values and your stated conviction as an organization or not. So to your point about breadth versus depth, or visibility versus those 3D actions, to me, those are just different strategies. And some orgs might need to go breadth first, some orgs might need to go depth first, but to me, that all fits into my new favorite brandmaxxing bandwagon.

Jonathan Hicken [00:10:50]: So in this work, we often talk about success looking like making our organizations obsolete. We've solved this big problem, so the world no longer needs us, high fives, we did it. And so I feel like in a debranding world, that goal is more achievable because you're integrated systematically and if your brand never really existed, you can just disappear and the world goes on. Whereas in brandmaxxing, we're almost looking for a more capitalistic market leadership. And so can you just disappear and say that you've solved the problem, now your brand no longer exists? Are you caught in needing to sustain your brand?

Eric Ressler [00:11:40]: That's a good question. To me, I think about brand as a critical pillar for an organization. So I could ask that same question about if you're operations maxing or if you're culture maxing, does that mean you can't spin down? To me, this is just a good sound business investment. And if not done well, you probably won't ever get to the point where you can spin down because you haven't been able to make that impact. Now, of course there's going to be some exceptions to this, but I also think that paradigm of "we're putting ourselves out of business" is a bit of a misnomer or oversimplification because usually the problems that we are solving are fluid, they're not fixed, and usually they're big wicked problems. And so you might solve one part of it, but there's certainly another aligned problem that you are probably going to be well fit to solve as well.

And now you have momentum, you have experience, you have a team of people who are aligned, who are already in motion. So you're probably better fit to go pivot as an organization than to spin down and hope someone else spins up for that next problem. Again, probably some caveats, probably some examples where, "Oh, we fixed that one problem and that one community and now we're shutting down, it was great." But I think that's pretty uncommon too.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:00]: Yeah, I think that's fair enough. And I also think that some of these problems, I think of a bell curve and if your organization's successful, maybe you're just shifting that bell curve, but there's still ends of the bell curve that you can continue to work on.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:05]: The other theme that comes up for me when I think about debranding and brandmaxxing is this idea of something that I think came up in an interview you had with Amanda, forgive me, I'm forgetting her last name.

Eric Ressler [00:14:15]: Oh Amanda Litman

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:15] About people not following brands, but following people. So okay, if we cross reference brandmaxxing with individual-led brands rather than organizational-led brands, is there a world in which you're building up an individual so much that it actually becomes a fragile point of risk for the organization?

Eric Ressler [00:14:45]: Absolutely. Yes. I think this is actually a really important point because Amanda's totally right, first of all, and she comes from politics and so a lot of her point of view, she has a really interesting point of view, which is why I was so excited to have her on the show because she is often talking about individual political candidates and politics at large in America, and she's also the executive director of Run for Something, which is a brand that helps young people and everyday people run for office. And so she has a unique vantage point in that she is both building a brand, she's building a personal brand, and she's helping. She has thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and recommendations around how to run successful political campaigns and what the next generation of political candidates needs to look like. And I think her point that you reference is that newer generations especially, but just culture at large right now doesn't have the same relationship that we used to to brands.

And especially Fortune 500 brands or big corporate brands, even institutions as brands. You see this so much in the academy or science or political institutions where there's such a degradation of trust that has happened in those institutions that used to just be like, "Of course we're going to do what the CDC does." And now it's like, "Well, what does my Instagram influencer think about vaccine schedules?" That's a huge cultural shift, not probably for the best in many cases. So what does that mean in terms of brandmaxxing versus debranding to take it back to our conversation? I think it just means the nature of how brands show up in culture has changed a lot. I think that in a positive light, it means that brands need to be more, I'll use some buzzwords here to point at a concept, human, authentic, these are the things you hear, less polished, more just straight up and real and less of a PR-based play and more of just... I think it's less about presentation and performance and more about truth and clarity.

Those are the words that I'm really thinking about a lot right now when I'm thinking about how we brand organizations, helping them deeply understand who they are way, way, way past surface level. That's becoming more and more important, crystallizing that vision and being really good at communicating that in a way that people can get instantly. And then yes, also having some people-powered stories behind that or people representation so that it's not your PR spokesperson getting a press release out. It's often the executive director or your development director or a staff person who's now responsible for that message.

Jonathan Hicken [00:17:35]: The risk I see, if you take these two concepts of brandmaxxing and individual-led brands, the risk I see is that you get the single point of failure where, especially if the individual who's most visible is the executive director or CEO, because one mistake and that whole brand comes crashing down. If you have invested a lot of brand equity and time into this individual and they leave or they make a mistake, you're toast.

Eric Ressler [00:18:10]: Totally agree. And I've seen this happen over and over again. Even before personal brand building was the hot topic where even just a super charismatic leader or board chair or executive director who was responsible for telling the story, who was really good with people, who had a good network, who was really good at fundraising, all of a sudden they're onto the next thing and the org's got the rug pulled out from underneath them. So I think we have to be careful about that. And I still believe strongly that as much as we should have more of that human, authentic, focused storytelling and yes, more coming from executive directors or CEOs and staff, we do have to be careful not to over-index on that to the point that there's no support behind it as the brand. You can do both at the same time.

And Amanda's doing a really good job of that. She's building a really strong personal brand. She's an author also. She has her own personal Substack. She talks about her work, she talks about her life, she talks about parenthood, and she's at the same time building up the Run for Something brand too. If Amanda were to leave, it would be a big thing for their brand probably, but she wouldn't be leaving behind an empty shell either. So I think there is some pragmatic balance that you have to strike there.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:25]: Yeah. I mean, obviously we want to tell human stories and I think all of the listeners can agree that's important. But there's this nuanced distinction between telling human stories and centering your brand on an individual that works there.

Eric Ressler [00:19:40]: Yes.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:40]: Frankly, I'm thinking about it in my own work because now I'm hosting a podcast for the Seymour Center that is arguably the most visible thing that we're doing that's outside of our building. And so I think about that. I'm like, I don't want to put my organization in a risky spot because now so much of the attention's on me. At the same time, I know that raising money, people give to people, and I want donors to get to know me. So there's this dance.

Eric Ressler [00:20:15]: It's a dance. It's a healthy tension, I would say, when done right, where people want to give to people, people want to follow people. I don't think that means you can't also build a strong brand, but I do think it means you have to be intentional about that. So you've built this studio, you've built this strategy and this workflow around creating content. If you were to leave or God forbid, get hit by a car or something and disappear all of a sudden, it would be a transition, but you've also built some infrastructure out that someone else on the team could come in and take over. And I think also the distinction is the story is not about the person. The story is delivered through the person in a personal human way.

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:00]: That's a cool distinction there, that the individual is the channel by which the message of the organization is delivered. That's a cool way to think about it.

Eric Ressler [00:21:10]: But the challenge there is not at the expense of your personality and your humanity, right?

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:15]: Like I still need to be Jonathan.

Eric Ressler [00:21:20]: You still need to be Jonathan, right? You can't just be a shell spokesperson. I think that's the thing that doesn't work anymore where you're just like, "I'm going to put on my suit and tie and say the company line." That's not personal brand building. That's not the kind of message or story or delivery method that's working in our current media environment.

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:40]: Ultimately, all of this is about balance, right? I mean, debranding and brandmaxxing, we set up the premise with these two extremes, right? So by nature, we're going to fall somewhere in the middle, but also that's really the reality of it. And from my executive director perspective, that's just running a business. You got to balance all of the levers. And so obviously debranding and brandmaxxing to the extreme are really not even feasible, but the sector at large has been unbalanced or imbalanced, excuse me, for decades or maybe even since the beginning. And so your voice in this sector, I think is really important because you're advocating for a particular version of running social impact, which prioritizes brand really heavily, but I think you're pulling the whole sector to become more balanced, which I think is ultimately healthy.

Eric Ressler [00:22:30]: Yeah. And one thing I would share as I've become more public in this work and through this podcast and other efforts is, I don't want to diminish that. I also, I'm an introvert. I don't love being on camera. I hate speaking in front of large audiences, et cetera. And I think sometimes we have almost this, we talk about this a lot, this pride of being behind the scenes. Or sometimes I see this with clients, and I think we're going to do an episode more on this, but I want to tease it out a little bit, where there's this, "Well, I don't want to add to the noise. I'm not important enough. I don't have a strong enough point of view." And honestly, I've started to come around to: get over yourself, because that is actually a pretentious point of view when you think about it, because you're saying it's not really that I'm not good enough. It's almost like I'm too good to put myself out there in that way and I don't want the attention. So it's this weird... And this is a transition that I've had where it's just like, you're not so special that you can't also do this. I don't know if I'm making any sense.

Jonathan Hicken [00:23:40]: You're totally making sense. The way I would interpret that is this hubris that if all of a sudden I add my voice to the mix, everybody's going to be focused on me.

Eric Ressler [00:23:55]: Right. And that's the thing, no one really cares that much. Your stuff is not so special that it can't also be in the fray. And I think the way that I would just think about this is that you need to be out there telling stories. You need to be out there. If you're doing this work, it deserves to get its message out into the world and you are doing a disservice, and this idea that I don't have anything to say or that we're going to bring too much attention to our mission. There's just a certain amount of this that's like, look, if you're going to be in the game, you got to play by the rules and the rules are dictated by human psychology and just get over it and just do it. That's something I've been learning a lot more because I was that person. I was like, "I don't want to get in front of a camera. I don't want to have attention on me. I don't want to be in the spotlight." And when I really started to unpack that more deeply and do some self-reflection, it was that, yes, I had imposter syndrome, I was worried about flubbing something, but also I was like, "I'm better than that. I'm too good to play this game. I don't need to." And it's just like, you don't need to, but be clear about the consequences in our current world about what you're giving up by not doing that.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:05]: Well, look, I hope that you do change your LinkedIn profile to Chief Brand Maxxer of the Social Impact Sector. No, but I really, really appreciate it. And I think that frankly, you're pulling the sector in a really important direction and I'm glad to be a part of it. So thanks for unpacking this brandmaxxing concept with me today, Eric. Anything else?

Eric Ressler [00:25:25]: Thank you for giving me my new LinkedIn profile.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:30]: All right, that does it.

Eric Ressler [00:25:30]: Thanks, man.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:30]: Thanks.