In recent years, branding has been all about polished storytelling, aspirational lifestyles, and curated perfection. But somewhere between the perfectly aligned flat lays and hyper-curated copy, something got lost: realness (a.k.a “authenticity”). In 2025, we’re seeing a bold shift. Some brands are trading polish for personality, control for chaos, and perfection for raw, messy humanity. We see the anti-brand strategy commonly adopted among smaller, indie brands. These niche, often digital-first companies are carving out loyal followings and disrupting legacy players across categories.
While it may be tempting to think of this trend as a gimmick or fad, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find insights that even legacy brands can leverage without throwing out their entire identity.
What is an Anti-brand?
An anti-brand doesn’t play by traditional branding rules. It actively subverts the expectations of their category. These brands lean into irreverence, contradiction, and cultural friction. Instead of trying to be loved by all, they aim to strike a nerve.
Design-wise, anti-brands often embrace:
- Raw and deconstructed layout
- Unexpected color pairings or aggressive minimalist
- Unfiltered photography, grainy textures, or lo-fi graphics
- Copy that reads more like an internal monologue than corporate speech
Why Now?
This shift is a direct reaction to over-engineered brand experiences. Consumers, especially Gen Z, are growing skeptical of “perfect”. In a world of generative content, authenticity is harder to prove and easier to fake. So instead of trying to mimic realness, some brands are exposing “flaws,” often rewriting those “undesirable” factors as positives or using them to start a more genuine conversation. Gen Z is rejecting the “Instagrammable” aesthetic, knowing it to be false and potentially even harmful.
Case in Point: Born to Stand Out
Take the fragrance brand Born to Stand Out. Instead of evoking traditional fragrance cues, like sunsets or florals, this brand leans into a moody visual chaos: incense-pierced strawberries, ink-splattered mangos, and a spilled up-side-down wine glass. Their tone and visuals are rebellious, loud, and audacious. The brand’s website copy reads like a manifesto with a middle finger pointed at the heritage fragrance industry. We mean that literally: their cursor is a little red middle finger. It’s brash, but also brilliant: by rejecting the norms, Born to Stand Out becomes unmissable. This strategy works because it resonates with consumers who are tired of buying into idealized lifestyles. Born to Stand Out gives them a point of view that’s excitingly fresh.
Image Source: Born To Stand Out Official Instagram
What This Means for Brand Managers
We often think of industries and their relevant categories as having boundaries we need to stay within. While these category norms can serve as a visual shorthand for consumers, they also run the risk of becoming expected. This trend challenges us to rethink these expectations.
The anti-brand movement isn’t just about shock value (although sometimes that’s part of it, too). It’s a strategic response to over-saturation. It’s how emerging players carve out space in mature categories, and how even established brands can inject freshness. Just think of how Liquid Death reimagined a simple product like water. Or how Billie used images of women with unshaven body hair to sell razors. That is the Blink Factor in action. Big brands don’t need to abandon everything to tap into this shift. Instead, they can apply the Blink Factor in ways that build on their identity with a fresh emotional point of view:
1. Design for Emotion, Not Just Function
Anti-brands succeed because they’re emotionally compelling. Expand beyond “on-brand” and ask: what do we want our consumers to feel in this moment? That means challenging visual consistency to express something different, like vulnerability, sarcasm, or undeniable confidence.
When SLD partnered with Crave, a frozen meal line from Kraft Heinz, breaking convention was key to the strategy. Most frozen food products were packaged in bright colours, targeting moms shopping for their families. Crave recognized that young adult males are heavy consumers in the category, and yet no one was speaking to them directly. Instead of the colorful, family-oriented look and feel that was ubiquitous in the freezer aisle, we introduced a black and grey palette, with a tattooed male holding the featured product. Highlighting flavor with a foodie vibe, Crave stood out to younger consumers of both genders and became an instant hit.
Image Source: SLD
2. Rethink Tone of Voice
Big brands often default to safe, positive, and universally friendly language. But real people don’t always talk like that. Use language that sounds like it comes from a real person, complete with personality, flaws, and point of view. Introducing humor, or even honesty about limitations, can make a brand feel more in tune. For example, Duolingo’s social media team has earned cult status by adopting a meme-savvy voice. That being said, whatever tone of voice you use must make sense for your brand. “Hey gurrrl” isn’t for everyone, and at this point has become common anyway.
3. Be Self-Aware
Anti-brands often acknowledge that marketing is artificial and build trust by breaking down the pretence. Large brands don’t have to pretend they’re small, but they can show self-awareness. Admitting flaws or poking fun at yourself can humanize a brand.
The pet food brand, “Just Food for Dogs,” showcases this starting with its name. Its cheeky messaging, summarized in its billboard ad, plays into the nonchalant disposition. The brand says, “Listen. We have nutritionists, veterinarians, and toxicologists on staff, but we don’t have mural artists, so we can’t design a nice billboard”. But more broadly, they’re saying that you are paying for quality food, not branding; it’s the product that matters here, not anything else.
Image Source: Ad Ages Official Webiste and Just Food For Dogs Official Website
Conclusion: Being Human Is The New Brand Strategy
The anti-brand is a reflection of how consumers want to engage. They’re sick of being sold to; they want to be spoken to instead. Anti-brand systems aren’t static; they evolve, shift, and even contradict themselves. For big brands, this doesn’t mean chaos, but it does mean building flexibility into the system. For brand managers, designers, and strategists, this is an invitation to let go of the myth that brand coherence requires rigidity and that you can’t go outside category norms. And remember that in an age of AI-generated everything, sometimes it’s the messy, moody, flawed, and unpredictable that make brands more human.
