When Market Research Gave Birth to Sameness

In the early 1990s, two Russian artists, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, took an unusual step. They hired a market research firm. Their goal was simple: understand what Americans truly wanted in a work of art.

Over eleven days, researchers asked over a thousand US citizens questions about color preferences, sharp angles versus soft curves, and smooth canvases versus thick brushstrokes. The artists then painted a piece reflecting the results. They repeated this process in countries like China, France, and Kenya. Each painting, part of a series called “People’s Choice,” was meant to be a unique collaboration with different cultures.

But the plan backfired spectacularly. Despite surveying over eleven thousand people from eleven different countries, each painting ended up looking almost identical. Komar famously remarked, “We have been traveling to different countries… receiving more or less the same results, and painting more or less the same blue landscapes. Looking for freedom, we found slavery.”

Thirty years later, Komar and Melamid’s prophetic experiment feels eerily familiar. The landscapes they painted have become the landscapes where brands are built today. Welcome to the age of average brands.

Why Brand Identities All Look the Same

In late 2018, Thierry Brunfaut and Tom Greenwood coined a term for the phenomenon: blanding. They described it as “a new army of clones wearing a uniform of brand camouflage.” Think made-up word names placed in a sans-serif typeface, clean and readable with just the right amount of white space. Throw in a direct tone of voice, maybe some cheerful illustrations, and forget about a logo. Just remember to use vibrant colors, with bonus points for purple and turquoise.

Companies like Airbnb, Spotify, and eBay have all traded colorful, expressive logos for straighter, stricter alternatives. This trend is not limited to tech. In fashion, Yves Saint Laurent dropped its italicized serif typography for an all-caps, sans-serif wordmark in black. Balenciaga, Berluti, and Balmain followed the same path. In a category built on standing out elegantly, brands started blending in.

Car manufacturers are also joining the race to sameness. Vauxhall, Audi, Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota, and Nissan all introduced flat, minimalist logos. What once looked like chrome-sculpted bonnet badges now resembles simple two-dimensional symbols. The visual identity landscape has become a monochrome wasteland.

At Your Marketing Bank, we often remind our students in the Affiliate Marketing course that differentiation is your only true currency. If your brand looks like every other option on the shelf, you are handing your customer a coin they can spend elsewhere.

advertising and the Tyranny of Terrazzo

In 1982, American photographer Irving Penn shot an ad for Clinique that became known as “the shelfie.” It featured a bright white medicine cabinet with glass shelves, bottles of pills, and a few Clinique products. Since then, brands like Selfridges, e.l.f., and Billie have all created their own shelfies. But this is just one tired trope.

Other setups include objects placed on a mirror reflecting the sky, dense patterns of water droplets refracting a single item, or subjects positioned in front of faux scenic backdrops. These layouts share a consistent style of art direction. As Molly Fischer noted in The Cut, products now occupy “blank pastel landscapes manipulated by a diversity of hands.” Ads no longer bellow or hector. They whisper in restrained sans-serif fonts.

Elizabeth Goodspeed calls this the “moodboard effect.” Designers use the same online platforms, draw inspiration from the same imagery, and create the same types of adverts. The result is a visual mass where nothing stands out. If you need help standing out, consider exploring our website design, search engine optimization, and digital marketing services with the famous trainer Nehme Sbeiti. It is easier than you think to break free from the average.

Brands Sound the Same Too

The verbal identity of brands has also collapsed into a pool of clichés. Shai Idelson, strategy director at BBH, collected 27 brands whose taglines follow the “Find Your…” structure. Lucozade uses “Find Your Flow.” Rightmove uses “Find Your Happy.” Volvic uses “Find Your Volcano.” Behind all these taglines lies the same tired insight: young consumers celebrate individuality above all else.

We also see the “…Your Way” construction from Nespresso, Sonos, and Dunelm. And then there is the “However you…” cliché from Naked smoothies, Captain Morgan, and Lemsip. It is staggering how little linguistic diversity exists in modern marketing.

Twitter even investigated how brands speak on social media. When users were shown redacted tweets and asked to guess the brand, only 38 percent could pick the right one from a list of five options. Among those who guessed correctly, 17 percent admitted it was a lucky guess. Twitter and Pulsar Platform analyzed posts from brands like Yorkshire Tea, Netflix, KFC, PlayStation, and Patagonia. Over time, all of them reduced their average tweet length, adopted the same tone of voice, and used the same keywords.

Brand names are also in crisis. New names like Syrn, Skylrk, Cyklar, and Cécred are impossible to pronounce and even harder to remember. They morph into each other linguistically, creating a soup of sameness.

Conclusion: The Age of Average is the Age of Opportunity

Brand identities, advertising, taglines, tones, and names are all converging. But homogeneity reaches far beyond branding. AI apps have the same starry icons. Websites, illustrations, interior design, coffee shops, restaurants, buildings, movies, books, and video games all look the same. The reasons are varied. Turbulent times make people seek the familiar. Our obsession with quantification and optimization pushes us toward safe options. Globalization of inspiration kills originality.

But this is also the moment of opportunity. When every supermarket aisle looks like a sea of sameness, bold brands have the chance to chart a different course. The key is to be different, distinctive, and disruptive. Cast aside conformity. Exorcise the expected. Decline the indistinguishable.

For years, the world of branding has drifted in one stylistic direction. It is time to reintroduce originality. As the ad agency BBH says, when the world zigs, zag. That is the only path to standing out in the age of average.