Too much of a good thing eventually stops being good. The same way one more spicy tuna roll can tip you from bliss to regret, one more tagline can push your brand from memorable to forgettable. It never happens in one big bite. It happens slowly, in tiny decisions that all feel right in the moment.
Sushi.
What if that was it? What if you clicked the link, opened this blog, and all you saw was “sushi”? What if that was the entire blog, just one word? It would be like my blog visited Jenny Craig and lost it all except for that one word: sushi.
However, there is more, as you can now see. The writing, the words, the ideas continue. I wrote “sushi” because a friend of mine just texted me saying they found a new sushi place in Seattle and asked if I would be interested in trying it. In my mind, my answer was more Homer Simpson than human. My mind repeated the word sushi in low tones while my brain drooled. Yes, there is actual brain drool dripping from my ears.
Here’s the deal, pickles: I love sushi. I love it to distraction. The flavors, the feeling, the little bowls for soy sauce, the blob of wasabi dropped into the soy sauce to make a spicy, salty dipping sauce. I love rolls of every kind. Hand rolled, machine rolled, joint rolled, it does not matter, I love them all. Soft shell crab and eel. Oh my Lord in heaven, I love eel. If I could afford to, I would eat sushi every single night. My problem is that I often order too much and then I feel guilty, so I force myself (with very little force) to eat it all. Then I feel bloated and sick, claim “never again,” and yet here I sit, thinking about joining friends in Seattle for sushi. I will certainly go, and I will certainly overeat because it is just so good. And really, is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Too much sushi? I do not know.
As I plan my meal, I cannot help but think about how brands do the same thing. They overorder. A little slogan here, a tagline there, another layer of “we care deeply” on top. Before you know it, they are stuffed, and nobody is hungry anymore.
Overfed and Underwhelming
Too much of a good thing eventually stops being good. The same way one more spicy tuna roll can tip you from bliss to regret, one more tagline can push your brand from memorable to forgettable. It never happens in one big bite. It happens slowly, in tiny decisions that all feel right in the moment. A line added for clarity. Another added for safety. Someone wants to sound more modern. Someone else wants to sound more established. Each addition seems harmless until the flavor that made people love you disappears.
Most brands do not set out to overfeed their audience. They start with something honest, something fresh, something people can taste. Then success brings more opinions, more layers, more approval processes. Suddenly, the clean plate of sushi turns into an overloaded buffet, and the customer walks away feeling heavy instead of satisfied.
The truth is, clarity takes courage. Simplicity looks easy from the outside, but it is the hardest discipline to maintain once a brand has grown. Inside the company, everyone wants a voice. Every department believes its message deserves space. The product team wants features. The marketing team wants emotion. The sales team wants urgency. The executives want vision. By the time all of that gets combined, you have a meal no one ordered.
A brand that tries to say everything ends up saying nothing. The audience can feel the weight of that. They might not know exactly why the message feels off, but they sense the confusion. It sounds busy. It feels crowded. It loses trust. People do not want to decode what you mean; they want to know what you stand for in a single bite.
When messaging gets heavy, the instinct is usually to add more seasoning. New campaigns. New buzzwords. New reasons to care. But that is just adding sauce to a dish that was already overdone. The real fix is subtraction. Strip back the filler words and promises that sound right but mean nothing. Find the one thing that actually feeds people, and serve that.
Brands that overfeed are often the ones that care the most. They want to give everything they have. They want to make sure no one leaves hungry. But generosity without restraint becomes noise. Your audience is not starving for more. They are starving for something real, something that tastes like you.
So, before you add another adjective to your brand story, stop and ask yourself: Is this adding flavor or just filling space?
The Diagnosis: Spotting the Junk in Your Messaging
Every good cleanse starts with honesty. You cannot fix what you will not admit. For brands, that means facing the truth about what has crept into your language. It is not always obvious. Toxic messaging rarely announces itself. It sneaks in through good intentions. A small phrase here. A borrowed buzzword there. Before long, your copy reads like every other brand on the shelf.
The first step is learning to read your own label. Imagine your messaging as a nutrition panel. What is actually in there? How many ingredients are real, and how many are just preservatives keeping old ideas from spoiling?
Start with the empty calories. Words like “innovative,” “authentic,” “trusted partner,” “solutions,” and “excellence.” They look healthy at first glance. Everyone uses them, so they must be fine, right? But they are the fast food of branding. They fill space without feeding anyone. No one reads “innovative” and feels anything. It is a filler word you use when you have lost the courage to be specific.
Next, look for emotional sugar. These are the phrases designed to make you sound caring or connected without actually showing it. “We put customers first.” “We believe in people.” “We value integrity.” They sound good, but they are empty calories. They spike attention for a moment and then leave the audience hungry again. People do not want to hear that you care. They want to see it. They want proof, not promise.
Then there is the salt, the overuse of intensity words that make everything sound urgent or extreme. “Unparalleled.” “Unmatched.” “Revolutionary.” A little can bring out flavor. Too much overwhelms the taste buds and numbs the message.
And finally, check your serving size. Are you trying to feed everyone at once? Many brands pack so much into a single line that nothing stands out. The audience ends up with a plate of everything and a memory of nothing. A healthy brand message has proportion. It knows what to emphasize and what to leave out.
Spotting the junk is not about shaming your copy. It is about understanding how it got there. Most of the time, these ingredients came from a place of fear. Fear of being too plain. Fear of saying too little. Fear of choosing one message and letting the others go. But audiences do not connect with fear. They connect with confidence.
So be the brand that serves clean, honest language. Use fewer ingredients, but make each one matter. Replace generalities with specifics. Replace claims with stories. Replace comfort words with truth.
The best way to test if your message is healthy is to read it out loud. If it sounds like something anyone could say, it is junk. If it sounds like you and only you, then it is real food.
The Cleanse: Cutting the Toxic Stuff
Once you see the junk in your brand’s language, the hard part begins. Cleansing is uncomfortable because it requires letting go of what has felt safe. Those filler words and soft promises have been your comfort food. They have been there for years, passed through countless reviews and approvals, and accepted by everyone. Removing them can feel like removing history. But this is where transformation happens.
Start by clearing your plate. Take a single paragraph of your brand messaging and strip out every word that could belong to anyone else. Remove the empty calories first. If you can imagine another brand saying it, it does not belong to you. Keep only what feels true and proven. This is not about sounding poetic. It is about being precise.
Now look at what remains. You might be surprised by how little is left. That is fine. Clarity begins with emptiness. You cannot season what is still covered in sauce. Sit with the silence of fewer words. It will feel strange at first. Brands, like people, get attached to their own noise. We fear that simplicity will make us look small. In reality, simplicity makes us visible.
Next, add back proof. Proof is the opposite of promise. It shows instead of tells. If your old line said, “We care about every detail,” show how. Tell the story of the time you stayed late to fix a problem that no one else noticed. If your copy said, “We go above and beyond,” replace it with an example of what that looks like in practice. Real stories are your clean protein. They nourish trust.
Then add texture. Not more words, but more truth. The goal is not minimalism. The goal is authenticity that can be tasted. A clean message should still have flavor. It should still sound human. Speak the way you would if you were sitting across the table from your customer, not standing on a stage.
As you rewrite, pay attention to how the new message feels in your mouth. Read it out loud. Does it sound confident without shouting? Does it carry rhythm and warmth? Does it taste like something you could serve again tomorrow? Those are signs of a healthy message.
A true brand cleanse is not about starving your story. It is about feeding it what it actually needs. Clean words. Honest intent. Real proof. Once you experience how light and clear that feels, you will never want to go back.
The Rebuild: Adding Back the Flavor
Cleansing is only half the process. Once you have cleared out the toxic ingredients, you need to rebuild your message so it feels alive again. A brand that stops after the cleanse risks becoming bland. Clean is not the same as flavorless. The goal is to remove the junk without losing the joy of expression.
A healthy rebuild begins with real ingredients. Go back to the moments when your brand actually did something remarkable. Not the slogans, not the campaigns, but the proof. What do your customers love telling people about you? What stories make your team proud? What moments felt effortless because they were true to who you are? These are your raw materials.
Bring those stories to the surface and build from there. Instead of writing from ambition, write from evidence. Instead of trying to sound inspiring, sound specific. If you once said, “We provide exceptional service,” replace it with something real, such as, “We answer every call by the second ring.” That one detail says more than an entire paragraph of empty promises. Specificity is your seasoning. It gives your story taste and texture.
When you rebuild, listen for rhythm. Good writing has a pulse. The right words move the reader forward. Too much symmetry, and it sounds robotic. Too much variety, and it feels chaotic. A strong brand voice sits somewhere in between, steady and confident. If your language makes you want to read it out loud, you are on the right track.
Do not be afraid of personality. Clean language does not mean sterile language. If your brand has a sense of humor, let it show. If your brand speaks with quiet authority, embrace that tone. People crave voices that feel human. The trick is to express your flavor without overspicing the message. A pinch of personality is enough.
Rebuilding also means learning to trust simplicity. A clear line does not need decoration. It does not need a string of adjectives to make it sound powerful. The most powerful thing a brand can say is something true, said simply. Every word that remains should earn its place.
Once your message feels balanced, step back and taste it again. Ask yourself if it still sounds like you. Ask if it feels honest. Ask if it could only belong to your brand. When the answer is yes, you have rebuilt something worth serving.
The best brands do not rely on constant reinvention. They rely on consistency. They know their flavor and keep it steady. They refine, refresh, and evolve, but they never start from scratch. That is what gives them weight in the market and trust in the mind.
A brand that has gone through the cleanse and rebuild will always stand out. It will sound lighter, sharper, and more human. People will feel the difference even if they cannot explain why. That is what flavor does. It lingers.
The Maintenance Plan: Staying Consistent
A cleanse feels good at first. You clear out the clutter, lighten up, and see your brand in a new way. But if you stop there, the old habits will return. The hardest part of any diet is not the cleanse itself but the consistency that comes after. Brands are no different. The challenge is to keep the message clean once the excitement of rewriting has passed.
Consistency begins with awareness. Every new piece of content, every post, every tagline should be held up to the same question: Does this sound like us? Not does it sound clever, or trendy, or exciting, but does it sound like us? When the answer is yes, you are protecting your voice. When the answer is no, you are slipping back into the noise.
To maintain your brand diet, build habits that support discipline. Create a simple checklist that everyone who touches your message can follow. It might include questions such as: Is this specific? Is it true? Is it ours? That kind of clarity keeps you from adding words that do not belong.
Give someone ownership of the language. A brand without a voice keeper is like a kitchen without a chef. Too many cooks start adding ingredients, and soon the dish no longer tastes like itself. One person or a small team should have permission to protect the tone, rhythm, and clarity of the message. This is not about control. It is about care.
Schedule regular reviews of your core language. Once or twice a year, read your homepage, your about page, your social bios, and your internal documents out loud. Listen for where the message has drifted. Listen for where someone has added a phrase that sounds nice but does not sound like you. Cut it, refine it, and bring the voice back to center.
Consistency also depends on culture. The cleanest language will not survive if the company behind it does not believe in it. Your people need to understand that clarity is not decoration. It is the way you respect your audience. When your team speaks with that belief, your message will stay strong without effort.
Finally, remember that a healthy brand voice is alive. It will evolve over time, but it should never lose its core flavor. Refinement is part of growth. Reinvention is not. Keep what works, adjust what needs freshness, and trust that simplicity will always age better than excess.
When a brand learns to maintain this kind of discipline, it creates trust that no campaign can buy. People know what to expect when they hear from you. They know the tone, the rhythm, the honesty. That is what turns a brand from a one-time meal into a lasting taste.
The Takeaway
A brand diet is not about eating less. It is about choosing better. The goal is not to strip away your personality but to remove the noise that hides it. When you cut the processed language and the sugary promises, what remains is something clean and strong. You can taste the truth again.
The same way a perfect piece of sushi needs only rice, fish, and care, your brand message only needs what is essential. The words that carry real flavor. The proof that speaks louder than claims. The confidence that lets silence do some of the talking.
At ThoughtLab, we believe that clarity is a creative act. A brand that commits to it does not lose expression. It gains precision. Our work begins where the clutter ends, helping brands rediscover their original flavor and serve it with confidence.
Brands that learn this discipline do not sound smaller. They sound sharper. They sound alive. They speak with a rhythm that people trust because it never tries too hard. They understand that good writing is not about more words. It is about the right words, served at the right time.
So take a look at what you’re serving. If your brand feels heavy, if your audience seems full but not satisfied, it might be time for a cleanse. Remove what is empty. Keep what is real. Add back only what gives life to the story.
A good brand diet does not starve your message. It feeds your audience the truth, clean and full of flavor. That is what ThoughtLab helps brands do every day.
