I still call it Twitter

Anyone else?
Brand isn’t just what a company says it is—it’s what people collectively decide it is.

You can carefully choose your name, your positioning, your attributes. But if you don’t consistently live them—through your products and services, your behavior, your decisions—your audience won’t adopt them. They’ll default to what feels true based on experience.

We see this all the time. Firms claim to be “innovative,” “customer-first,” or “authentic,” but their audiences don’t perceive them that way. The gap between intention and reality is where brand credibility breaks down.

The Twitter/X shift is a fascinating, real-time case study. A company made a clear, decisive brand change—and much of the world simply didn’t follow. Not out of defiance, but because habits, perceptions, and meaning don’t change overnight.

Brand is co-created. You own part of it.
The world owns the rest.